you, kurtz, and gannon are confusing the issue. being gay isn't a problem. being a prostitute posing as a journalist in the white hour press is. how did that happen? can you explain it?

The "some" total? Looks like there are more idiots around than just the "Gannon idiots"...

How typical, if you can't address the points made in the post, find some grammar error to point out. I guess that allows you to ignore the utter hypocrisy of the team lefty blogs in their little circle-jerk over the Gannon story.

I think it's hilarious that conservative Gannon apologists keep saying he was "outed". The fact is, Gannon put up all of the websites that he used to pimp himself for everyone to see. I would hardly call pictures that you put into the public realm "private". Gannon isn't the central story, but rather an interesting sideshow illustrating the insulary nature of the Bush administration. They go to great lengths to innoculate themselves from criticism. This is just the tip of the iceberg. "Scratch a lie, catch a thief". (From "Ray")

Being a prostitute posing as a journalist? What the hell are you talking about?
He was one in his past, but as Gannon put it, does his past mistake mean that he shouldn't have a future, and that he was no longer qualified to be a journalist?
The whole thing is completely irrelevant to his career as a journalist, and was nothing but a blatant smear fest.

You neocons have missed the point entirely. Liberals do not care that aka Gannon is homosexual -- only that he exemplifies administration and conservative hypocrisy regarding the issue of homosexual rights. The fact that he was able to gain access to White House press conferences with only questionable journalism credentials indicates that he had some inside connections in spite of his now known association with pornographic websites. The "newpaper" he worked for is known for their gay-bashing articles, yet he seems to lead a secret alternate private life. And his life would have remained private were it not for these ironies. After all -- IT'S THE HYPOCASY, STUPID!

Additionally, nobody is "bashing" Gannon for being gay. They are mearly pointing out the hypocrisy of his political views. The real issue here is how Gannon got a never-ending series of daypasses to the white-house, when legitimate journalists are left out. I could care less that Gannon is gay, in fact, unlike so-called "conservatives", I want him afforded the same rights that every hetrosexual man and woman enjoy in this great country. Lastly, Gannon got into the white house originally as a member of the "news orginization" GOPusa, which is obviously not an "independent" news orginization. You apologists are really hypocritical. I guess it's only ok to be gay if you're a "conservative" eh?

I openly call for Gannon to be replaced with ANOTHER partisan rightwing shil - OR - or the immediate removal of all partisan leftwing shills. Let's end the hypocrisy.

"Additionally, nobody is "bashing" Gannon for being gay."

No, you just talk about it an AWFUL lot.

I for one do not care if he is a flaming fag or whatever.

Prostitution is something else entirely, and not the sort of person who I think the PRESIDENT should give the time of day too.

Adam asks above, as Jeff Gannon asked in his interview on CNN "should my past prevent me from having a future?" Perhaps some perspective would help answer this question. Should somebody who's served time in jail for petty crimes like smoking pot lose his future because of his past? Felons who've paid their price in jail aren't allowed to vote in this country and you can ask this question with a straight face? Of course your past is relevant. You can't commit a crime (isn't prostitution a crime?) and then try to wipe the slate clean the next day because you've "changed". There's something called consequences, and you pay them whether you're straight, gay, conservative or liberal...

I'm noticing a trend of late.

Every time libeals are exposed for the hypocritical moonbats they(most of them) are, people go nuts in the comments section trying to defend them...

Like I keep telling r.a. quit whining that light is being shown on them and try to clean up the mess on your side.

i'm sorry, i had the pictures of this man sent to me, and it made me sick. I believe if anyone repents, then they get a clean slate... but something is wrong with this guy. Suppose my son somehow came in contact with him... he would have no idea this man fights the demons of homosexuality. I think the president and his staff should keep men who engage in these acts, even if it is in their past, out of this White House. It makes our president look bad.

Nice work Paul, obfuscate the real argument with some more liberal bashing generalizations that bear no relavence to the issue. Maybe you should take over Gannons spot in the press corps>..

Actually, the outing of Jeff Gannon has revealed the answers to a number of puzzling questions that have dogged America for years. Did you know that:

Jeff Gannon sabotaged Apollo 13.

Jeff Gannon invented time shares.

Jeff Gannon beached the Exxon Valdez.

Jeff Gannon started global warming.

Jeff Gannon invented lint.

Jeff Gannon started the Fox News Channel.

Jeff Gannon outed Valerie Plame. (uh, sorry, that’s old news now)

Jeff Gannon forged 100,000 Bush ballots in Ohio.

Jeff Gannon stole the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

Katherine Harris is really Jeff Gannon.

Read more of this stunning expose here:
http://mikesnoise.typepad.com/noisepage/2005/02/the_ultimate_je.html

Hey Joe, there's nothing wrong with being gay, and therefore, I have no trouble talking about it. Gayness is normal. Conservatives are the ones who have trouble talking about it. Gay Gay Gay! See? It's not that hard.

Hey Mike, Nice effort trying to downplay the importance of the Gannon story by making light of it. If only you had been so protective of someones right to privacy when the whole Monica L., Bill Clinton thing was going down (so to speak). A 40 million dollar inquisition that established nothing except for confirming that Slick Willy likes a nice BJ. I guess policing peoples sexuality is only ok if it's a liberal eh?

Jeff Gannon killed Yasser Arafat, and he gets a press pass?

Bottom line - gays should have all the rights everyone else does, except the right to be politically conservative.

Nice try triticale, once again you pretend that the issue is gayness, rather than access. Just so you know, there are just as many gay conservatives as liberals. They just can't come out because they are afraid of the reprecussions. After all, who forced "Jeff" to resign from Talon News? Talon won't even talk about him now. I guess once his sexuallity was known, Talon had no more use for him given his newly disclosed "liability". Conservative won't touch him with a ten-foot pole now (or even an 8 inch one). You don't get it do you? Conservatives want to ammend the constitution to make Gannon a second class citizen. Being a gay conservative is like a black man joining the Klu Klux Klan. If all this whole issue does is force conservatives to look at gayness in a new light, then perhaps something good can come out of it.

Chadwig -- way to ignore the issue of Clinton's perjury. Stop buying into all the left's myths.

As for Gannon -- unless you have a record of him being convicted, be really, really, careful slinging around accusations of criminal activity.

Wow, Paul. You sure got 'em riled up for calling them on their shit.

If Gannon had been an ex-pothead, as Chadwig asks above, there is not a chance in hell anyone would have run with this pretend "story". What are they going to do? Show the guy sitting there with a doobie in his mouth? How exciting would that be?

There is exactly one reason they took hold of this thing: they done found theirselfs a FAYgit, his big ol' gawDAMN FAYGIT PECKER was a-hangin' out thar, and they gonna STRING his FAYGIT ASS UP.

The rednecks who did this are pretentious, self-righteous morons- the guys who substitute mob-feeding for thought. And the present attempts to rationalize this lynching are pathetically disingenuous.

Liberals have accused conservatives of being racist sexist homophobes for so long they actually believe it now. When Gannon turned out to be gay (if he is at this point I don’t even know what to think of this fiasco of a ‘scandal’) they seemed to expect all of the homophobic conservatives would realize their deep burning hatred for gays and reject him? So the libs run around saying ‘hey your boy Gannon is gaaaaay!’ and the response from most conservatives was something along the lines of, 'uhm… so what?’ Gannon used to be a male escort (I guess…?). Most conservatives, who understand all about repentance and forgiveness, agree with Gannon’s point that mistakes in the past do not mean he has to hide under a rock the rest of his life to atone for his past sins. This failure to live down to liberal stereotypes of conservatives course seems like hypocracy to the ‘open minded’ and ‘tolerant’ liberals who never ever stereotype vast groups of people.

Mike's "expose" (see above) of all that Gannon-Guckert has ever revealed or done is a typical Rush-Limbaughian gambit that consists of nothing more that lies and hyperbole to serve the ignoble purpose of seeking to diminish by ridiculous comparison the wrong that has or is now taking place.

It is time to see through this intellectually fraudulent ploy.

Being a prostitute posing as a journalist?...
He was one in his past, but as Gannon put it, does his past mistake mean that he shouldn't have a future, and that he was no longer qualified to be a journalist?

the answer is yes, being a prostitute in the past should prevent him from being a journalist in the white house. why? you ask. Because a prostitute in the white house compromises everyone in the white house, in other words blackmail. Now when people in the white house defend him, are they defending him because they believe in his defence or are they affraid of something?

Jeff Gannon in the Washington Post article says he will still try to find work as a journalist. Do you think the white house would let him back in if he asked? Do you think he should be let back in?
if you are correct in your assessment that people's past (even if it's by 3 months) should remain in the past then i gess the answer is yes.

a different question. had it been a female prostitue would people's reaction have been different? how?

"Of course your past is relevant. You can't commit a crime (isn't prostitution a crime?) and then try to wipe the slate clean the next day because you've "changed". There's something called consequences, and you pay them whether you're straight, gay, conservative or liberal..."

But particularly if you're conservative, and particularly if you can use it to make some ironic statement about the administration's hypocrisy.

Of course, giving a conservative writer access to more things than some, when it turns out that the writer was once a gay prostitute, makes the anti-gay marriage Bush administration hypocrites.

Give me a break. If this was about legal consequences, someone would have reported this to the police. This isn't about consequences--this is about attacking someone who you dissaprove of.

For those of us who are not against gay rights, but also voted for Bush, the hypocrisy here is not quite so obvious--at least, not on Bush's side.

Homosexuality isn't dirty unless it can be used against your opponents, right?

Gannon isn't the central story, but rather an interesting sideshow...
The sideshow is trivial and not interesting in the least except to those that are easily redirected from pertinent issues. Worse still, hacks use the trivial issue, unjustly, to attract attention to the perceived relevant issue yet fail to advance that issue beyond the trivial component. Kind of ironic.

"[I]nsulary nature of the Bush administration"? They permitted, no actively recruited and engaged according to the most vitriolic, a supposed gay man into their lair. Is this not antithetical, according to the Liberati, to the Conservative ideoology? How is this representative of insularism?

"They go to great lengths to innoculate themselves from criticism. This is just the tip of the iceberg."
Explain your statement. While every administration tries to present the best argument/defense for its policies and deflect or minimize its errors (as I'm guessing everyone on the planet is apt to do), I fail to see how this Gannon episode applies in any way to an "iceburg" of inoculations. What did the Bush administration do to or with Gannon to insulate themselves to or from anyone or anything? I don't see the connection. I think I sense conspiracy theory here, but I don't want to prejudice your answer before commenting further.

Hey Robert, firstly, I don't go for myths- not religious ones, and certainly not historical ones. I am no Democrat, be sure of that. As for Clinton (whom I despise for other reasons), his perjury was committed as a direct result of the investigation into his sex life. He lied, yes, but to a question that should never have been asked. Clinton did not post pictures of himself on the internet getting blown by Monica. The "independent" council should have never gone there. The whole affair was politically motivated and to deny that is simple denial. I actually think the oval office blow-jobs were Clintons most endearing quality. I have no partisan motivations. I operate on facts. Part of my anger over this story stems from my thirst for real information. Gannon was taking a seat from someone who could've asked a real question, with real implications about the future of our nation. A reporters job is not to be a cheerleader, or a wonk (on the right or left), but rather, to question the government. The bully pulpit that is occupied by the President is enough of a platform that he doesn't need the assistance of the free press. The press' job should be to expose, debunk, question, deconstruct, and unflinchingly audit the decisions and policies of those in power. Period. Someone re-writing White-house press releases is a propaganist, not a journalist. Period.

As far as throwing around accusations of criminal activity, accusations are a neccesary pre-curser of an investigation, which is a neccesary pre-curser of an indictment, which is a neccesary pre-curser of a conviction. Any objective look at the sites that Gannon had up (some still active as of Monday), would lead any reasonable person with no axe to grind to believe that he was/is a prostitute. My beef is that he is a prostitute for a White House terrified of critisism, not that he's a $1200 a weekend, fake military, stud-monkey..

Repentance by us, and forgiveness by Christ are truly marvelous things. However, sometimes these terms are used only to deflect justified criticism. Such crass manipulation of good and decent people is actually terribly evil. Such obvious insincerity should be an alarm for all of us who try to live up to Christ's ideals. We need to rebuke those (especially those in public positions) who, in seeking to cover their own evil-doing, exploit the words and beliefs of genuine Christians.

What is Wolf Blitzer's real name?

I bet it isn't "Wolf" or "Blitzer"

Baron

I see the left is busy throwing lots of shoes. Could be they'll find themselves walking around in the cold barefooted.

There's no way to win this debate with liberals and their dishonesty. If a check had been done and revealed that Guckert/Gannon was gay and had possibly been a male prostitute in the past and he was excluded for that they'd be screaming that conservatives are homophobes and pointing out that he was never convicted. Since he found a loophole that allowed him to get a pass just like a liberal could have done the administration isn't vigilant enough. They say the fact he might or might not be gay doesn't matter, if it didn't matter they wouldn't be screaming it at the tops of their lungs. We'll just have to do like we always have to do and be satisfied that we didn't stoop to their level. It's a compromise for both sides really, we have to listen to them brag about their great victory and try to keep a straight face, they have to pretend the trophy they bagged when they caught Gannon is comparable to bringing down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. They can't even be honest with themselves, as this clearly shows, so why in the world would we ever expect them to be honest with us?

"Gannon was taking a seat from someone who could've asked a real question, with real implications about the future of our nation."

Oh give me a break. Taking a seat? Everyone is free to ask questions at a press conference, and regardless of who they are (even if they'd asked hardball questions in Gannon's seat) whoever is being asked decides on how to answer the question or if to answer it at all--and when they do, the answer they give is often not satisfactory to either their supporters nor their critics. It's the nature of politics.

And what are you saying? That because Gannon didn't ask the right questions, he deserved to be publicly humiliated?

I thought the Lewinsky scandal was idiotic at the time and crossed a line that should not have been crossed--I said so then and I'll say it again now. But if liberals thought it was wrong then, then why is humiliating Gannon ok now?

By your logic, when you don't like how someone's acting in their post, it's morally fine to dig into unrelated matters in order to publicly humiliate them.

So the next time an official you like is dealt that fate, remember that--someone out there disagreed with him enough to destroy him personally and professionally.

I've never been a big fan of the ends justifying the means.

The issue is not his gayness, but his fakeness and the fact that he sold sex. If a female "reporter" had been revealed as a working prostitute masquerading as press, I think peop