Membership: Join Now : Login

Framing 'Jeff Gannon'

If anyone wants to step back for a moment and look at how the wingnut right avoids criticism in this country, look no further than the current "Jeff Gannon" brouhaha and how the right frames its response.

The facts:

"Jeff Gannon" does not exist. It is a psuedonym, chosen by a man named "J.D. Guckert" for whatever reasons he had and has not shared with the world. Guckert has apparently held several jobs, and has posted beefcake shots of himself on sites that he owns (or at least domains that he owns) advertising gay prostitution ("escort") services.

Perhaps to hide that connection, Guckert applied for Capitol Hill press credentials under an alias, "Jeff Gannon." The Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court do not issue press credentials to assumed names - in fact, married female reporters who write under their maiden names have to obtain credentials with their married names. No phony names allowed. The Capitol press office nonetheless vetted Guckert under his alias, and found that his alleged employer, Talon News Service, is not a news service. It has no circulation, few advertisers, and exists as an arm of a Republican propaganda group called GOPUSA. As that group says, "The mission of GOPUSA is to spread the conservative message throughout America."

Talon News does not report "news" and never has - it's a fake news service designed for people who don't like unpleasant facts that occasionally show up in less biased outlets. The Capitol press office therefore denied Guckert's request for credentials under his pseudonym, because credentials are for reporters, and Guckert wasn't one by any journalistic definition.

For anyone else, that would be the end of it - reporters who can't get Capitol credentials can't get White House credentials either. Yet somehow, Guckert managed to get "day passes" from the White House for nearly two years, and some reporters say they saw him wearing permanent press credentials with his pseudonym, "Jeff Gannon," laminated on them. Press secretary Scott McClellan regularly turned to Guckert when questioning from actual reporters got too tough, knowing Guckert (whom McClellan called "Jeff Gannon") would lob GOP-friendly softball questions at him.

President Bush did the same thing in his last press conference, finally prompting some people to ask who this guy was. When Guckert realized people were looking into him, he posted a defense of himself entitled Hiding in Plain Sight. He said he was willing to answer questions, but said the only tough question he got was "incomprehensible." He said he refused to be cowed by people looking into what he was hiding behind his pseudonym. Then, when his gay prostitution activities were uncovered, he abruptly "resigned" from Talon News, took all the stories off his own Web site, and said the voice that wouldn't be cowed had been "silenced."

Summary: A man who was denied Capitol press credentials because is he a conservative shill and not a reporter nonetheless got those credentials from the White House, something that would never happen to any other writer. Instead of seeking facts, Guckert was in the White House press room to "advance the conservative agenda," to push the press room back onto his favorite story lines when the administration started to have trouble with tough questions. When people start looking at him, he says he's "hiding in plain sight." When that proves to be true, he heads underground.

The conservative spin:

the case against Gannon boils down to being too pro-Republican, writing stories with a conservative slant, and being linked to conduct, homosexuality, that is accepted and celebrated by those who were going after Gannon in the first place. The standard of the liberal thought police is evidently that someone's private life should be protected¯except when the accused is a conservative. The old media and their new found friends in the left-wing blogging community will stop at nothing to maintain their political power.

See how this works? They take each of the damning issues and recast it as being a victim of something.

  • They deflect Guckert getting credentials that no one with a similar story could get by saying that people who point this out are unhappy that he's "too pro-Republican."

  • They deflect his involvement with military prostitution (doubly illegal) and their own hatred of gay people by saying that if "liberals" approve of homosexuality, it shouldn't be held against conservatives, apparently meaning that only gay Democrats should be denied rights and due process.

  • When Guckert invited scrutiny by saying he was "hiding in plain sight," people who took him up on that invitation are now "invading his privacy," even though AIM and other conservative organizations insist there is no right to be privately gay (the guy who wrote that defense of Guckert, Cliff Kincaid, also wants laws banning gay sex between consenting adults).

  • According to Matt Drudge, the Bush White House tried to smear an ABC News correspondent who uncovered low US troop morale by leaking that the reporter is both gay and (gasp) Canadian. Yet when "pro-Republican" "reporters" are held to the same standard, they cry foul.

This is what happened in September when CBS News found contemporaries of Lt. GW Bush, in the Texas National Guard, who swore on camera that his commanding officer was pressured to write good evaluations for him and give him other special treatment because he was a Congressman's son. The right wing, too fast for reality, pounced on four documents as not being verified as authentic - even though the Commander's former secretary said on camera that the content of those documents accurately represented his thoughts and words at the time - and turned it into "Rathergate."

If you say war is a bad idea, they say you're anti-American. If you say privatizing Social Security is a bad idea, they say you're biased for using the word they invented, "privatized." If you point out that Bush administration figures like Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney are obviously, repeatedly, and verifiably lying, you're accused of "lowering the debate." It becomes about your conduct instead of what they have obviously done, and the press lets them get away with it because if they don't, they get accused of "bias" too.

Guckert's boss at Talon News swears that Guckert applied for his White House credentials with his real name and his real Social Security number, but his credentials had his pseudonym on them. His gay prostitution web sites would make him doubly-unsuitable to gain credentials, yet he got them, and no one will say why, nor is there any chance in hell that people looking to "advance the progressive agenda" could get the same kind of access. That's discrimination of speech based on its content, and is a pretty clear First Amendment violation.

Their response? "People who question our mean hypocrisy are mean hypocrites." That's usually where it ends, too - when it's a Republican being investigated. Let's hope that finally changes this time.

Discuss
[ Print This Page ]