The PropaGannon story has the chance to get to the heart of the most devious and dangerous aspect of this administration, to wit: their uncanny ability to motivate people to support their radical agenda through the disemination and manipulation of false information. Yet those of us here in the liberal blogisphere run the risk of squandering the story by playing into the hands of a White House that would love to keep this story a small curiosity about the sex life of an unknown guy who no longer works there.
With the recent coverage by CNN, NBC, Olbermann and others, the MSM has finally begun to wake up to the possibility that this could be a substantial story. This is a hugely important development because the MSM have acquiesced if not been outright complicit in(or on the payroll of) the administration's propaganda campaign for the past 4+ years. Yet this is a story that should stick in their craw because they are both eyewitnesses to, and victims of, the Gannon scam. His interference in the press conferences was at their expense,
flip it
deflecting whatever feeble attempts they might have tried to muster to get at the truth by presenting a safe haven for Fleischer, Mclellan, and Bush himself.
All this provides the press with a level of personal motivation, not present in the many previous scandals of this administration, that might finally propel them to do their own serious investigations about how this administration has orchestrated its disinformation campaign in general. If that occurs, the administration's deceitful ways, which have been obvious to people like us who pay close attention to such things for a very long time, will begin to become obvious to the broader general public. And that's exactly where things need to go if this is to become anything more than an amusing blip in the liberal blogisphere. Should it ever reach that point, the administration's credibility as a whole will take a very serious hit, and their attempts at using disinformation to propel other aspects of their radical agenda, such as SS, will meet a far more skeptical general public. You're average American resents being lied to, and exposure of this administration's propaganda campaign should be the holy grail of our efforts.
Is the gay sex angle important? Sure, it's certainly raised the attention level of the MSM and gives the story a jump start if it ever reaches the American public. But the sex angle is a two day story, at best, if it remains about one guy's personal life. That's exactly what Gannon wants it to be, and it is surely Rove's conscious hope that that is what it will remain. He knows with absolute certainty, as should all of us here on the liberal blogs that, much as sex did of course succeed in getting everyone's attention, sex by a nobody who's no longer in the WH briefing room is a non-story. It has no national significance and will be forgotten if not cast back at us as "yet another example" of liberal partisans going off on nothing. In fact, they will of course accuse us of being hypocrites ourselves in harping on this angle, which, as I suspect we all agree, no real liberal could or should give a damn about. To continue to harp on it serves Rove's purposes perfectly and I'm sure he couldn't be happier at the way every report by the MSM seems to cite the sex angle as our motivation here on the blogs.
Could the sex angle gain legitimate importance? Yes, but only if it appears that some high official within the administration gave him access in exchange for sex. In that case, Bush would actually have to fire someone for a change, in order to maintain any credibility at all with his base. But I wouldn't bet on that coming to pass. I think his use of an alias is more likely explained as an attempt by him to shield his personal life from his rightwing employers who surely would not have given him the job had they known of it.
My agenda here is to encourage all of us here in the liberal blogisphere to avoid giving the WH an easy out by turning this into a sex story about someone the general public still hasn't even heard about yet, and never will if our efforts continue to be perceived by the MSM as being primarilly about the sex angle. I think, and I suspect we all agree, that it's a lot bigger than that. We sell this as a sex story at our own peril. That's just what they want us to do.
The bloggers who've been seriously investigating these facts have become real journalists in the highest and best sense of the profession. They are the Fourth Estate of the New Millenium, and god knows we've desparately needed their arrival these past 4 years. Now, as they gain their due recognition and respect, we should avoid squandering their efforts by looking at the small picture.
This story's not about sex. It's about government propaganda in the land of the free.
FOR AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO FRAME THIS ISSUE, GO TO:
In Search of a Democratic Karl Rove http://www.attackadoftheday.blogspot.com/.