So, if a 'Jeff Gannon' was getting day passes to lob easy questions to...

[LynneSin]

...Bill Clinton - what would be the reaction from the media. Especially since it turns out that Gannon was a gay prostitute to boot.

I'm reading all these essays & articles from right-wing pundits who are trying to say that this story 'isn't important' and we're just making stuff up. But I mean, his entire history was out there just waiting to be uncovered!

So I'm curious - how do you think the "liberal media" would have hadded Gannongate 8 years ago?

:shrug:

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Let's see...Time magazine, for starters, would devote the next year to it.

billions of dollars would be spent investigating it...there would be massive protesting wherever Bill went...I could go on...but the thought makes me ill.

[forgethell]

2. YOu know,

I have been trying to make sense out of this "scandal". I don't see it as particularly relevant ot anything. Are we upset becasue he's gay? I'm not. Are we upset because he lobbed softball questions? Agian, it isn't the first time or the first president.

What I am unaable to figure out is exactly how this does us any good, as I do not see * implicated at all. but I might have missed something. Please enlighten me.

[LynneSin]

3. Well, in a nutshell

A person with no journalistic background using a fake name was able to get into a White House press conference.

To get a permament pass you have to meet certain qualifications and go through a thorough background check. This guy just walked in with a driver license that actually didn't even have his reporter name on it.

I might also add the hypocrisy. I could care less if the guy is gay, but the guy also wrote some scathing pieces against homosexuality and for Bush's anti-gay amendment. Plus the guy was a fricking prostitute. The list is endless.

So in a nutshell - security because in this post 9/11 world, no one should be able to provide so little identification and get that far in the White House circle. And more importantly the hypocrisy!

[Shakespeare]

4. um, how about we're upset because....

...a rightwing hack fake journalist from a fake news site that was rejected for capitol hill credentials, who uses an assumed name, and who has a little problem with the IRS was being given a day pass by the white house for two YEARS so that he could circumvent the rigorous security and screening process that real journalists undergo? And he's there so he can be called on ahead of real journalists to ask softball questions of the chimp?

When you look at this along with the administration using taxpayer money to hire columnists to shill for the president's programs, you honestly don't see why we should be outraged?

And all of this doesn't even touch on the incredible hypocrisy (and potential for blackmail and scandal) concerning a gay escort being given unprecedented access to the west wing.

Frankly, I don't understand why you're not outraged.

[forgethell]

7. OK, tie

him in with Bush for me. Tell me what law has been broken. As far as I am aware, there is no law against being homosexual, and very little stigma attached, either. So where is the potential for blackmail? As for the hypocrisy, all I can see is Gannon's own.

I just want a clearer picture of what the fuss is about, rather than the normal outrage, often deserved, at anything that has to do with the * administration.

[Shakespeare]

12. geez, where to begin?

He represents a potential--if not certain--security breach in the west wing. That's serious, serious business; the white house willingly circumventeed a rigorous background check for over two years. And why? How much more tied to Bush do you want it? His administration is responsible for this.

As for blackmail, it could go two ways--one, blackmail Gannon RE his apparent homosexuality to write only propaganda for the white house (something he seemed more than happy to do anyway, but important in light of the white house paying columnists to do that very thing), and two, if Gannon is sexually involved with somebody in the west wing (Rove, McClennan, etc.), then he would be in a position to blackmail for access to ingelligent. It's a HUGE espionage risk.

[forgethell]

13. And do we have any facts

as opposed to hypotheses?

[Shakespeare]

14. Yes, we do. n/t

[BOSSHOG]

5. Compromise of Classified Information

I had access to Secret Documents when I was in the Navy. If I had chosen to put some of them in my briefcase, go home and let my neighbors peruse those documents and what I did got back to the Navy I would instantly find out what the relevance of the situation was. My ass would have been kicked and then thrown in the brig for a long, long time and my career ruined. Meanwhile, the bush white house does the same thing and nobody even gets slapped on the hand. Gannon's sexual activities are what bush ran against and why people who hate homosexuals voted for bush. I hope you have found this post enlightening.

[forgethell]

8. Yes,

thank you.

[FrankBooth]

10. Yep, you missed something alright ...

... something you obviously didn't want to see.

[AllegroRondo]

6. 24/7 coverage on cable news

every local station parked on Gannon's front lawn

radio personalities daily outrage at the loose morals of the white house

Larry King interviewing Gannon's former Marine Corps buddies

[Cadence]

9. I'm surprised they haven't spun it yet to make it

look like that's what actually happened.

[MikeG]

11. They did. Don't you remember Gary Aldrich and "Unlimited Access?"