Friday, February 11, 2005

Jeff Gannon Speaks: Behind The Ball-Gag

Republican ringer/fake journalist/dog-tag model Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert granted an interview to Editor & Publisher magazine. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the squirrels churning furiously in Jimbo's brain, because now the gig's up, and he's got a lot of 'splainin' to do.


He also threw into question media accounts suggesting that he had seen a classified CIA document critical to the Plame case, saying he had made references to the “internal memo,” but adding, “I never said I had it or had seen it.” But when asked if he had in fact seen it, he declined to say.


Uh-huh. This could be a clue for the Scooby Doo-like investigative abilities of the SCLM. Right now they're busy debriefing Corey Feldman as to whether or not Michael Jackson milked his trouser snake 20 years ago. You could see where that might take priority over the strong possibility of a White House official illegally leaking a classified document to a fake reporter from an astroturf news site.


Although Press Secretary Scott McClellan and others at the White House knew that Gannon was not his real name, they always referred to him by that name, he said in the interview. "My professional name is Jeff Gannon, and that is what people called me,” he explained, adding, in an odd reference, “It is like Kirk Douglas, they do not refer to him when they meet him by his real name."


Yeah, just like Kirk Douglas, except Kirk Douglas never pretended to be a 'turf hack so he could lob penetrating, insightful questions at the President of the United States, like how he could work with Democrats who were "divorced from reality".

(Apparently that portion of the White House transcript has found its way down the memory hole, as has most of Gannon/Guckert's "work" for Talon "News". Coincidence? We think not. So already we're ahead of Wolf Blitzer and Howard Kurtz, and the rest of the hacks that fester in the corrupt media. Give me your money, Howie, you suck! Go earn an honest living.)


He said he couldn’t understand why anyone would feel that letting him in to the presidential press conferences and briefings under an alias, and with questionable journalistic credentials, suggested a security breakdown. "If I am a Republican shill,” he said, “wouldn’t you think I am the least amount of a threat to the president?"


Well, you are a shill, dipshit, so of course no one thinks you pose a particular threat to Bush. (Unless, of course, there's some unrequited dog-tag weirdness, and you decide to try to impress James Van Der Beek or something.) The point is that if they apply those piss-poor security standards across the board, it's only a matter of time before someone who's not a corporate/political shill gets through and asks an unscripted question that forces Bush to think and speak extemporaneously. And we just can't have that anymore.


Guckert claimed that his family began being harassed a week ago. Asked how this was possible, when his real name didn’t even surface until late Monday, he held to the view that "it was out there a week ago, and that is when it started. My mother and my brother and his wife in Pennsylvania were being harassed with phone calls and threats."


If this is true, and it could very well be, there is just no excuse for it. Quit harassing his mom, you assholes. Still, the timing of it all seems awful quick. How many phone calls could there have been in a week, and how bad could they have been? It seems much more likely -- given how quickly after the story broke that he quit and his articles started getting purged -- that the powers that be at GOPUSA had something to say about Jimbo's fate.


"Even though it has been very painful,” he said of the current uproar, “lots of opportunities have come forward journalistically. Once all of this blows over, I think it might actually help that I have gotten this attention." He would not cite specific examples of any new opportunities. He cited Dick Morris as an example of someone whose travails, and brash political views, helped launch a media career.


Super. He can go suck Dick Morris' toes, and get Regnery to pay him to write a jeremiad of the evil liberal media, and the way they wilded a "hot military stud" who really just wanted to be held by his Republican masters. They all deserve each other.



Jeff Wells, who brings the conspiracy smackdown at Rigorous Intuition, has what has to be the most unusual elaboration on the whole Guckert/Gannon mess. Very interesting stuff. Check it out.

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