Every time I read Anne Coulter, it makes my ears bleed and my head throb. But, I gave it another try in her latest pro-Gannon screed ... and, yup, bloody ears and head's a hurtin'!
Basically, she's written some trash (full thing below the fold - no link, she doesn't deserve the web hits) that claims that we only care about the fact that Gannon is gay. She fills this article with lies to get her point across.
More below:
Here's the trash (read further at your own risk):
REPUBLICANS, BLOGGERS AND GAYS, OH MY!
By Ann Coulter
In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents.
The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?
Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.
First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a press pass so that he could ask softball questions -- a perk reserved for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a Web site that no one has ever heard of -- but still big enough to be a target of liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters have them?)
On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"
Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.
But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass -- even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)
Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is "James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a right-wing Web site get inside the White House press briefings and presidential news conferences?"
Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert used to play journalist" -- as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com" and laughing.
Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner -- aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.
Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.
Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.
Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like The New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on TV and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)
Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
If you haven't destroyed your monitor, it's time to take out the trash:
First, as we all know, Gannon sure as hell wrote about gays. Gannon wrote last year that John Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president,' citing his "100 percent rating from the homosexual advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign" for backing a "pro-gay agenda." Anne, of course, it trying to hide Gannon's gay bashing to make the bloggers pointing out that he is gay seem like gay bashers, thus obscuring the real point: showing Gannon's hypocrisy for attacking Kerry's tolerance when he himself is gay. Plus, the hypocrisy of this President who things gay marriage should be banned for being immoral allowing a gay prostitute the access reserved for (hell, and that's not even bringing up the illegal access he got to classified info in the Plame scandal).
Second, Bill Clinton's changed his name in HIGH SCHOOL because his mother remarried - so there is no relevence to a reporter using a fake name
and not telling his audience.
Third, John Kerry was never John Kohn. His family changed their name from
Kohn to Kerry when they converted to Catholics in 1897 - before Kerry
was ever born!
Fourth, Gary Hart changed his name in college - well before he entered politics. Again irrelevant to the Gannon story - he changed his name
specifically for his political writing.
Most important, her attempt to distract with her Dowd and Helen Thomas slamming is pathetic, especially given that she never addresses the point she brought up in relation to them: how Gannon got a pass to sit a few feet from the president and ask him questions in a news conference. Can anybody get one of these? That's got to be the criteria given that this person got a pass at all - what credentials could their be given that he received passes before he was ever part of any news organization - before Talon News existed
I'll also add that Gannon wasn't just gay - he was a gay prostitute, which (last time I checked) is a crime. Shouldn't a background check have unearthed that a criminal was asking the President questions about his Second Term? Hell, a bunch of bloggers in their p.j.s figured it out in less than a week, so I'm sure the FBI or Secret Service would have if they tried.
In any event, the Dowd misdirection is just that - a misdirection. As CAP helps us figure out, the point is that Dowd was denied long-term access in the form of a hard-pass, while Gannon was waived through for years on the day-pass. So what if the passes have different words on them -the access Dowd sought was denied her, and the same access she sought was given to a gay prostitute.
I'm sure you'll find more lies, distortions, and illogical statements if you tried - it's like an Easter egg hunt!