Who Wants to Hire an Escort?

I usually leave politics to bloggers who like to do research and cite sources. By and large they do a good job, and are just fine without my help. Besides, all that fact checking is a little too much like work for my taste.

That said, I just have to comment on the latest exposure of the President’s hypocrisy, Jeff Gannon (aka James Gluckert). This little gem is just too delicious to pass by. Jeff Gannon reputedly was Washington Bureau Chief for a news organization called Talon News. For the past year he has received each day a one day press pass to the White House. He’s posed questions to the Press Secretary and to the President himself. However, he was denied a press pass to Congress, and denied a permanent press pass to the White House. None of this would have raised any eyebrows, although it is unconventional. But at a recent press conference he asked the President (paraphrasing here) if the President would be able to work with Congressional Democrats when they are so divorced from reality.

That’s pretty blatant partisanship, and it piqued the interest of a few bloggers. They began to investigate Jeff Gannon, and turned up all kinds of interesting things. Like the fact that Gannon was a pseudonym, his actual name was James Gluckert. And that Talon News appeared deeply connected to, if not a front for, a Texas group called GOPUSA. Which was run by a longtime political ally of George Bush’s. The most interesting tidbit was the websites Gannon owns, which seem to be advertising for a gay male escort. And that said escort is a dead-ringer for Gannon.

Now it’s fine if partisan conservative groups want to hire gay prostitutes to drive their agenda. But it’s another thing when said prostitute is presented as a reporter for a news agency. News agencies, in order to be considered such, need to be funded by advertising or subscriptions, not political contributions. And it’s kindof a big deal when the prostitute is able to get into the White House, under an assumed name, and give the President a nice easy one when he’s got his ass in a jam. With the CIA, FBI, and NSA all reporting to the President, you’d think the White House would know it was letting a gay prostitute hired as a Republican shill have access to the President. Wouldn’t that make sense?

But the most interesting part of this whole debacle is the long-forgotten Valerie Plame incident. Plame was the CIA operative whose name was leaked by the White House after her husband publicly refuted the allegation that Iraq was getting uranium from Niger. Turns out that Gannon (the gay prostitute) was one of only 6 reporters who saw classified documents related to that incident. Interesting choice. What were the criteria for choosing those 6, that they only do out-calls? Gannon, of course, doesn’t do in-calls. And he’s exclusively a top, according to his website. Maybe it was his willingness to, as it says on his website, “go to the game with you, and then afterward…..”

Of course, this is clearly just a bunch of liberals with their panties in a bunch, besmirching the good (well, assumed) name of yet another fair and balanced conservative. Except that most of the material I’ve discussed above comes from an entry in the Conservative Voice blog. Not exactly of bastion of left-wing hand-wringing. And if all of this is untrue, why has Gannon not publicly said so, perhaps in his interview on NPR last week? And finally, if a few bloggers using Google and checking out some websites can uncover this, why can’t the National Security Administration do the same?

Oh yeah, and he’s 3 years behind on paying taxes. When the White House did their exhaustive background check they missed that too. But if he grows a moustache he’ll look just like Bernard Kerrick (the President’s last idiot eruption) and that eternal favorite, G. Gordon Liddy. Come to think of it, they may all have more in common than looks.