A Tissue of Lies [Falls Church News-Press... subject: GANNON]

[truthisfreedom]

if you don't go read this entire article (not that long) you will SERIOUSLY miss out on a brilliant analysis of exactly what we are experiencing with gannongate... this writer, Nicholas F. Benton, has apparently been wearing a gas mask to avoid the contrails and has avoided sipping even the tiniest taste of the kool-aide.

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http://www.fcnp.com/451/whitehouse.htm

A Tissue of Lies


By Nicholas F. Benton

There are a whole number of levels and angles by which the Jeff Gannon debacle shocks, titillates and alarms. This so-called White House reporter was recently exposed and discredited for many things, among the least operating with a pseudonym. Jeff Gannon is really James Gucket. This self-proclaimed right winger, it turns out, has a private life that exemplified anything but.

Of course, it's easiest to see the obvious self-loathing that attends the type of person whose public posturing involves an angry repudiation of his own private behavior. All too common. One doesn't know whether to pity such a person or to vilify his hypocrisy, perhaps both. A major problem is always the collateral damage caused by such cases, the way the person's internal self-hatred translates into harm inflicted on others.

Another feature is the way in which this kind of thing, perceived by the perpetrator as a kind of defense mechanism against real or imagined threats, transfers into a more general behavior based on deceit and double standards. After all, cloaking a private life with a public one that stridently decries it constitutes a profound form of lying. Cultivating an internal mental framework rooted in a hysterical lie, such a person develops a predisposition to lie about many things. Thus was Guckert able to lie himself into the White House, using a pseudonym and probably a lot more. Ultimately, it’s all about lying.

Nobody has associated this case with the regrettable Stephen Glass of the New Republic, whose case was so brilliantly documented in the film, “Shattered Glass.”
His was a case of lies piled upon lies, like layers of an onion, each justified to his own mind as desperate acts of self-defense. But his entire role as a young reporter at the New Republic was nothing more than, as they say, “a tissue of lies.” In the Guckert case, the lying doesn't stop with him. He is merely one liar among many of his cohorts, a pyramid of co-conspiring liars in fact, not the least of which is the president, himself.
<snip>

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[Petrushka]

1. "...the very fact that this man was allowed to . . .

. . . walk through the gates and past the layers of guards into the White House under false pretenses, using a pseudonym--suggesting that all the arduous Secret Service efforts to protect the president with extraordinary security measures were defaulted in this case (and how many others we don't know about?)--indicates that the White House wanted him there." <snip>

Strong writing! Made a printout to share with others. Thank you!

[rodeodance]

2. "It was an arrangement rooted in lies"....thie arrangement is part and

partial of how the WH operates and conducts its daily business and until a critical mass of people (obviously not at that point yet) strongly objects--it will continue.


The White House press office and Scott McClellan knew how to use Guckert, masquerading as a journalist just as he masqueraded as straight and anti-gay, just has he masqueraded with a false name. McClellan knew how to exploit this bundle of lies by deferring to Guckert repeatedly during daily briefings for the proverbial softball questions, for the opportunities to repel and deflect questions from real journalists. This all leads right to the top, as we all saw on national television when Bush, himself, connected directly with Guckert by giving him the floor at a major East Room press conference.

It was an arrangement rooted in lies, top to bottom, that brought the president of the United States into direct collusion with a lying male prostitute on national TV.

While the effort of politicians to manipulate the press goes back at least as far as the invention of moveable type, attempts to reinvent the press in one's own political image probably go way back, too. It's always unscrupulous, but why should that stop anyone? In recent times, of course, we’ve seen the rise of Fox News, one of the best attempts yet at packaging propaganda as news and misleading an entire nation. Then there are the more subtle controls over the mainstream media by boards of directors of parent companies with vested interests in certain political outcomes. Can any honest journalist working for any such organization deny that, ultimately, the spin on the news he or she attempts to report will not be so influenced? .....

[bklyncowgirl]

3. Add the rest of the White House Press Corps into the tissue of lies.

Obviously many of these reporters were suspicious of Gannon. Since people involved in the Daschle campeign raised alarms about Gannone over a year before anyone else did and notified reporters, it's hard to say that this was a shock.

It seems to me that those reporters who proclaim belief in an independent press but failed to out a shill when they saw one are complicit in his lies as well as the administration. Whether they did so because of political reasons or because they feared retribution, the results are the same.

[sendero]

4. I agree...

... if I thought anyone would read it much less heed it, I'd send an open letter to virutally everyone in the TV news/pundit media.


"Do you think you are ultimately going to get away with this? Do you think we are going to forgive and forget? You could not be more wrong."

[Phoebe_in_Sydney]

6. I know it's probably already been said ...

... but when the most high-powered journalists in the US can sit in the same room as a fake for so long and not say anything or do anything about it, it's clear they have no interest in drawing attention to the fact that the emperor has no clothes.

Hell, I've been in sports press boxes where the inhabitants will sniff out a "pretend" journalist and complain about clubs getting lax with accreditation over the course of one game. There's always a clique that knows who should and who shouldn't be getting a press pass. These White House poodles are on such short leashes they just shut up and do what they're told.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. great to see

at least one reporter with integrity and a willingness to report the facts.