This is the diary to collect and condense information about "Jeff Gannon"'s "Kerry as 'first gay president'" piece, so please don't recommend it.
I've been Googling this for a while. During the 2004 campaign season, the "first gay president" meme wasn't limited only to Mr. G's speculation, nor was it limited to wink-wink-nudge-nudging about JK. Even Shrub got labeled as "the first gay president."
Here's what I've got so far:
Google's cached version of Mr. G's "article": first out 10/12/04
The first reference I could find to Kerry supposedly becoming the "first gay president" was the blog Just One Minute, in 3/03/04's entry, On To The Vice-Presidency!:
Kerry himself seized the spotlight with the news that he is contemplating a race change, declaring that he hopes to become the second black President. But what will Theresa Heinz do when Sen. Kerry follows through on his (weirdly under-reported) follow-up pledge to become the first gay President? Enough with the pandering already - no mas!
Interestingly, the entry just before that reposted a Newsday article Valerie Plame Wilson subpoenas and listed the intrepid Mr. G in the roll of subpoena-ees:
MORE: The subpoena list:
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed White House records on administration contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets in a special investigation into the improper leak of a covert CIA official's identity to columnist Robert Novak last July. They include:
- Robert Novak, "Crossfire," "Capital Gang" and the Chicago Sun-Times
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Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, Newsday
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Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post
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Matthew Cooper, John Dickerson, Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney, Time magazine
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Evan Thomas, Newsweek
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Andrea Mitchell, "Meet the Press," NBC
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Chris Matthews, "Hardball," MSNBC
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Tim Russert, Campbell Brown, NBC
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Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, The New York Times
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Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal
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John Solomon, The Associated Press
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Jeff Gannon, Talon News
This is just a hypothesis, but it's possible that Mr. G. got the idea for a JK-"gay president" article from reading this blog. Perhaps he was into Googling his own name and found it that way.
First mention of the Gannon piece on Free Republic: Kerry Could Become First Gay President -- 10/12/04.
More soon. . .