Gannon doesn't deserve all this attention

[imenja]

It seems to me the important issue involving Gannon is the White House's use of shills to promote policies that any thinking journalist or analyst wouldn't support. Gannon as an individual, what he's written, etc... doesn't deserve the attention he's getting on this site. I wonder if some of this may not massage his ego.
I'd like to see the focus stay on Bush's White House and their efforts to create a fraudulent press corp.

[DenverDem]

1. Spot on.

That's why the MSM has made it a cult of anti-personality.

[merwin]

5. MSM is afraid to write about much of anything

[hector459]

26. Wrong. It's about the Bush WH and "Gannon" is an example of the frauds

they pull on the American public. It does deserve this attention and even more. That's the problem...this fraud is not gettin enough attention in the MSM. I don't buy the notion that more important issues are being ignored by us. If any issues are being ignored they are being ignored by the MSM and not us. We can walk and chew chewing gum. We can pay attention to many issues at once. But we can't afford to ignore any issue that is this brazen and fraudulent and has the potential for putting the MSM on the defensive about their whoring for this administration. Let the chips fall where they may. We can not and should not let this issue die until most Americans are aware of it.

[amazona]

2. hard to discuss evidence

If we're afraid to discuss Exhibit A.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[CindyDale]

3. I think it does feed his ego

A narcissist loves any kind of attention, good or bad

He's earned it, though. Let him have his day in the sun.

[mzmolly]

4. Depends on where him and his undies lead.

;)

If the fruit of the looms lead to Rove, he "deserves" every bit.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

6. There are some elements of the story that deserve a lot of........

attention.

I am just tired of the concentration on the gay sex obsession that countless threads seem to be devoted to.

[mzmolly]

8. Keep in mind, that's only because the * crowd claims that gays are

sub-human. It's because of the typical Republican hypocrisy, that the issue get's mention.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

13. I understand why the issue is all over the place.........

I just feel that of all the issues it is the least important one.

We already know the Right is hypocritical.

I am just tired of the "who was Gannon fucking?" or "is Bush gay?" threads.

Further, there isn't really any evidence of his being gay, nor of his being a prostitute, so this focus on everything gay seems a little odd......and Freeperish.

[mzmolly]

14. I agree.

It can be over the top and ignorant.

[amazona]

23. no evidence he was a gay prostitute ?

I would say that running websites offering one's sexual services to other men is decent evidence that Gannon was a gay prostitute.

Do you really think he got into the White House press pool based on his good looks and charming personality? There are lots of hot guys out there. He clearly had to provide a value added service, and his websites make it clear the nature of the service.

If prostitution be illegal, let it be illegal for all and not just for the middle class. THe person who procured the service and gave Gannon top access should be outed just as any middle class john would be who paid for play.

Very difficult for me to see where this is not appropriate of wide discussion. Unequal enforcement of law -- IOKIYAR -- is a very important issue as far as I'm concerned.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[President Jesus]

7. Amen

While most around here are patting themselves on the back for exposing a complete nobody, the rw zealots have now taken out two heavy hitters.

[mzmolly]

9. "Heavy Hitters?"

:shrug:

[imenja]

12. Rather

I'm not sure who else he might mean, except perhaps the producer fired at 60 Minutes.

[walldude]

10. While the guy himself is a complete nobody

the story is anything but. This along with the payola scandal is proving the White House is using time tested propaganda methods. I could give a shit about who this guy is or what he does in his spare time, but the White House Press Corps is supposed to be the elite of political reporting. To have the administration putting ringers in goes against the grain of freedom of the press. You can bet if Clinton had done this they would be unleashing the dogs....

[President Jesus]

18. If the guy worked for a real media outlet that reached millions daily...

...(instead of dozens daily) I'd find this story to be far more relevant. But the fact is, the guy wrote for freepers, and very few at that.

I'll bet big money there was not one impressionable voter that became a right-winger because of something they read by internet 'journalist' Jeff Gannon.

Does this story need to be told? Of course. But please, this is not Watergate, and the exuberance over this is just embarrassing, especially in light of the right-wingers taking out Rather and Jordan.

Brit Hume has 'reported' far greater right-wing inaccuracies as fact than any inaccuracies Dan Rather is guilty of, yet there seems to be no pressure on that jackass. But hey, we got Jeff Gannon. Pop the champagne.

[LynnTheDem]

19. And all his interviews on Faux Moos??? All his BS repeating ad nauseum

by rightwingnut pundits such as Hannity and Hume and Rush-Pigboy?

This story is hugely relevant because his fake reporting and spewing of bush propaganda was cited by so many to a wide audience.

[President Jesus]

20. You never even heard of this guy two weeks ago...

...and if you did, you're spending far too much time monitoring freeperland. More importantly, I guarantee you your non-activist friends never heard of him or read anything by him.

And you make it sound like Gannon was reporting some kind of propaganda exclusively. The truth is he was simply (and lazily) reprinting paragraphs from publicly available press releases from the WH pres office. These releases were read far more on the WH website than Talon News website.

The guy is a jackboot-licking stooge and scumbag...nothing more, nothing less.

As for the outrage about the Plame leak, I tell you what...my outrage has been focussed on Novak who actually has more than a few dozen readers. He's guilty of doing the same thing, which we've known about for 18 months.

[LynnTheDem]

21. I don't watch Faux Moos. I don't listen to pigboy Rush. Millions DO.

[imenja]

24. Novak is horrendous but the real crime was in the White House

and whoever, whether Rove, Libby,or someone else, leaked the story to Novak, Gannon, and the rest of them.

[Undercover Owl]

11. I bet he gets more dates now.

Now that everyone knows what a slut he is, next he'll be asked to pose nude.

[peacetalksforall]

15. Gannon deserves this attention. He is his job as far as we're concerned.

And his job is to do the right wings bidding.

The Plame memo means that he is a go-between operative.
His direct sponsors are right wing operatives.

The most important issue is the Plame - WMD - law breaking and the ties to the fake Israel/Italy/U.S. letter about uranium and who that involves in PNAC or JINSA or AEI or CIA or Military or the WHite House , plus the connection to the SOTU speech. Law breaking and lies and he is in the middle. That is why he deserves attention.

[WilliamPitt]

16. OK. Let's focus on Valerie Plame. Cool?

If "Gannon" were getting zapped for simply being a conservative reporter who filed boilerplate GOP talking points as news, one could possibly have some sympathy for him even if you find his views repugnant and his hypocrisy intolerable. Yet the real issue at hand here has to do with the name Blitzer failed to bring into the conversation: Valerie Plame.

Plame, you will recall, was the deep-cover CIA agent tasked to track the sale and delivery of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Plame was outed by two Bush administration officials, who leaked word of Plame's secret career to Bob Novak and several other journalists. They torpedoed her career deliberately as an act of revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who a week prior had exposed Bush's claims of uranium from Niger being used to make bombs in Iraq as a whole lot of smoke and nonsense. The breaking of Plame was also a none-too-subtle warning to any other administration insiders who might have been getting happy feet and were thinking of calling a reporter.

The Plame affair is, in the end, one of the grossest and most despicably deliberate breaches of national security to come down the pike in a long time. The perpetrators have thus far managed to slip the noose because the journalists who received their little tip are standing (correctly, in my opinion) behind the fundamental tenet of journalism: A reporter must not be forced to reveal their sources. Former Illinois U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been tasked to investigate the matter, and has issued subpoenas to the journalists in question. The names involved are some of the most well-known in the news media.

"Jeff Gannon" has also been subpoenaed by Fitzgerald in the Plame matter. That's where the train leaves the tracks.

According to the Washington Post, "Gannon" did an interview with Joseph Wilson in October of 2003. In that interview, "Gannon" directly referenced a secret internal CIA memo that named Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. According to the Post story, "Gannon" was the only reporter in the entire realm of journalism who had seen and read this confidential CIA document. "Gannon" proudly bragged about his role in outing Plame on the forums of the ultra-conservative website FreeRepublic.com, posting under the subtle pseudonym 'Jeff Gannon.'

"Gannon" wasn't just some gomer who got a day pass. He had serious access, as displayed by his knowledge of a CIA memo that no one else had ever heard of or seen. He bragged publicly about playing a key role in an act of treason perpetrated by members of this administration, something he would not have been able to do had he not had friends inside the Bush White House.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021105A.shtml

[imenja]

17. It's got nothing to do with sympathy

And your point about Plame illustrates my concerns perfectly. The criminal in the Plame affair was the White House official who leaked the story. Whether than was Rove, Scooter Libby, or someone else, whoever did it had national security clearance. Gannon's role in the affair is of no greater importance that the other journalists or shills who received tips from the White House. The crime was committed by the Bush administration, not the press or fake journalists like Gannon. Focusing on Gannon to such a great extent--obsessing with what a jerk he is--actually detracts from the more serious issue--the Bush administration's willingness to do anything, including breach national security--in order to plant erroneous news stories and corrupt the public's access to information. It has nothing to do with sympathy for Gannon. It's about keeping the focus on the real criminals--Bush co!

As for court subpoenas, the Supreme Court has ruled there is no constitutional protection for a journalist's refusal to disclose sources. Journalists can be compelled to name sources, and have been jailed for contempt of court for refusing to do so in the past. The problem for those seeking to learn that information is that journalists will generally go to jail rather than reveal their sources. It is possible that the legal challenges raised by Judith Miller and the Time reporter will result in some ruling that clearly establishes a legal protection for journalists, but for the time being the protection is one of custom rather than clearly defined law. The person who has most direct information about the leak is Novak himself, because it was his story that disclosed Plame's identity. The reason for subpoenaing Miller and others is the assumption that they would have been contacted by the same person who was Novak's source. That does not provide the same level of proof that Novak himself would. Assuming someone in the White House informed Gannon and passed him a classified document, his level of involvement and the information he could provide, if willing, would be no greater than the others contacted, besides Novak. The Justice Department should absolutely interrogate him on the matter, but he is hardly the only person who knows the identity of the leaker.

My point here is whether Gannon has sex with men, what he thinks about Helen Thomas or anyone else is unimportant. What matters is that we have a president who is willing to violate laws and traditional notions of a free and independent press in order to promote and distort press coverage of their policies. I'd like people to focus on the important issue that Gannon represents, not the various trivialities with which so many on this site seem concerned.

[tavalon]

22. Actually, I think you are missing the point of what is happening here

I think the reason people are putting this guy on the rack is actually because we're really, really tired of the mainstream media piling shit on us and reassuring us that it is fertilizer. So this guy, this very, very inconsequential turd is the sacrificial lamb for our rage built up over many years.

This is catharsis, baby! Whoever ended up as the sacrificial lamb was going to be torn to shreds.

Whether it feeds his ego or not is not really a concern to me. I think this is necessary catharsis for us and will likely keep us from going postal at a later date.

Oh, and Jeffie, or Jimmy or whatever the hell you are calling yourself these days, get your kicks over this now because it is your 15 minutes of fame. Just don't forget that you have entered the realm of the GOP expendible. We'll keep you around to make fun of you, they won't. I wouldn't fly if I were you, the Rethugs like their plane, um, malfunctions.

[Vinca]

25. MSM loves stories with sex and/or violence.

Look how they latched onto the Scott Peterson story. It goes without saying Gannon/Guckert isn't as evil as Peterson, but media might very well latch onto the story purely because of his smarmy web sites. IMHO we need to keep his name in the news and connect it to the White House every time it's uttered. I want Mr. and Mrs. Red Stater to know their boy George planted a shill with a definite nonfundamentalist background.