The Plot Thickens...


A funny thing happened on my way through my morning Google of the name “Jeff Gannon”.
A couple of excellent editorials from the state of Florida which I’ll excerpt later, a couple of references to an athlete or two sharing a surname with the infamous White House prostitute and reams of minor publications scattered across the country reprinting an impassioned defense of Mr. Gannon by a man, Cliff Kincaid, who, according to his biography on his organizations web site, “has appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated…the homosexual agenda.”
Interesting, no?
Missing from my Google was any reference to The Nashua Advocate whose excellent reporting, this past week alone, has propelled it to the top of past search requests.
A visit to the Advocate site reveals yet another superb bit of reporting on the Gannon matter with a text larded with the very name that should have resulted in a Google hit.
Again, interesting, no?

The Advocate’s latest Google-banned report says that Jeff Gannon utilized yet another false identity, Jimmy Moore, on Talon News bylined articles and that this name now appears on previously archived Gannon stories resulting from search requests on the only remaining non liberal public web archive of Gannon material, Mens News Daily.
Media Matters, on February 10th , posted excerpts from a Google-cached Gannon-bylined bit of disinformation that became the impetus for the right wing echo chamber’s “Kerry mistress” flap of January 2004.
According to The Nashua Advocate, those Gannon stories archived at Mens News Daily, now bear the false name of Jimmy Moore along with the discredited claims of Kerry infidelity.
The Advocate, who I would imagine have now archived Jimmy Moore’s existing Mens News Daily efforts for further study, additionally this morning, relates the fascinating story of Gannon’s curiously-timed involvement with an obscure South Dakota radio program in furtherance of his continued and coordinated with highly placed Republican officials disinformation campaign against former US Senator Tom Daschle.
I, again this morning, urge you to read today’s Nashua Advocate.

As promised my morning Google presented several excellent editorials all from the state of Florida:

The St. Petersburg Times:

The news media have a credibility problem and bloggers, for all their excesses, have shown they have a role to play in holding mainstream journalists accountable…How Guckert avoided the more extensive Secret Service background check most journalists undergo for regular White House credentials remains unclear…Mainstream journalists have nothing to fear from bloggers if they remain true to fundamental standards of accuracy and fairness.

The Tallahassee Democrat:

If you suspect the media are guilty of a double standard when it comes to covering the White House, you're right. It's now clear, without a doubt, that White House reporters are as easy on President Bush as they were hard on President Clinton. Consider the case of phony White House reporter Jeff Gannon.
You probably never heard of Gannon. No wonder. The mainstream media have largely ignored him - even though his story is as big a sex scandal, if not bigger, than anything that happened under Clinton.

The Palm Beach Post:

A man who posted his image on gay pornographic Web sites uses an alias and gets within a few feet of the president. Problem? Yes, but not as big as the problem it reveals…the more substantial story is the White House's unprecedented efforts to phony up the news, with the public paying part of the tab…While the White House press corps always has had its share of flaky reporters, they at least were honest flakes.

Modified Image: Talon News
- posted by Sean @ 7:55 AM 0 comments  

 


Rice looked as though she was prepared to…do a freeze-frame "Matrix" jump kick…the image of Rice…turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy.
--Robin Givhan, Washington Post

Modified Image: Reuters, Warner Bros.
- posted by Sean @ 9:03 AM 0 comments  

 
Transition or Dying Vestige?


Thursday, the convoluted tissue of fibs and half-truths that is GannonGate, enjoyed one of those absurd transitional days in the life of a major modern American political scandal.
This morning, our untelegenic (video file of Today show segment) post millennial Fawn Hall kicked off the festivities by allowing Campbell Brown to semi-nail down his extracurricular web-based personal services:

Brown: You have said that you registered a number of pornographic Web sites. Is that accurate?

Gannon: Well, I registered a number of domain names, that some have suggested are…

Brown: Pornographic Web sites.

Gannon: Well, yes.

Brown: Did you advertise yourself as a gay, male escort for hire on a Web site?

Gannon: I cannot go into those specifics.

Specific-hungry bloggers, also this morning, noticed Mr. G’s hurriedly reworked JeffGannon.com was up, running and spitting cool-to-the-touch milquetoasty faux luminescence:

I developed some good friends there [the White House] who welcomed the refreshing perspective I brought to the briefings.

Also included on JeffGannon.com, along with cliché references to “faith” and crucibles, was another Washington scandal standard:

In [sic] regard to the allegations about my personal life, I have been advised by my attorneys not to comment on any of the details.

It should be noted that someone edited the above statement, which, earlier Thursday, contained this more interesting turn of phrase:

"Per the advice of my highly-paid legal team..."

Anyway our naïf of nookie ultimately doesn’t disappoint as, against the expensive advice of one or more attorneys, he does mention a detail:

A reporter that helped bring the beloved Tom Daschle down.

Sadly for certain highly placed DC hardballers, poor Jim/Jeff just doesn’t know when to stifle it as he again illustrated with an unusual interview given to Gabe Caggiano of the suburban Washington, DC Montgomery and Prince George’s County Sentinal:

"My sinful past will not prevent me from having a future. I am a decent, giving person who has provided comfort and assistance to AIDS victims for over a decade. I am a leader in my Capitol Hill neighborhood responsible for improving the quality of life in a transitional part of the city."

What’s that Jim/Jeff?
Did you say “sinful past” within your paean to urban homosexuality?
Why, whatever did you mean?
Merely registering domain names could hardly be construed as sinful by even the major religious denominations, could it?
But for catspaw Jeff, all fluffer protestations to the contrary, hard news meat finally arrived late Thursday though the impressive web offices and old-fashioned journalism skills of The Nashua Advocate:

Our research has focused on whether a White House news correspondent shared opposition research with staff of U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD) in a purposeful attempt to discredit a sitting Democratic Senate Minority Leader (Daschle); whether a White House news correspondent lied about his identity to the Daschle campaign in order to get information which would or could be used to discredit them; and whether a White House news correspondent synchronized his news stories in order to have them coincide with the partisan activities of the Thune campaign.
Thus far, all three of these theories/propositions have proven true: the first, Gannon has admitted to the news outlet Editor & Publisher within just the last 72 hours; the second, The Nashua Advocate confirmed with the spokesman for the Daschle campaign; the third, former Thune staffer and current Professor at South Dakota State University, Jon Lauck, has admitted on his publicly-accessible blog.

The writers of The Nashua Advocate sound disheartened.
They have discovered the kernal of illegality within the shit-pile of sexually-charged nonsense.
The entire article, hell their entire blog, makes facinating reading and I would recommend it to your kind attention.
They close, in part, by saying this:

Gannongate is one of the largest, most complicated, and ultimately most invidious scandals Washington has seen in years…It's big, and it's slipping away, just like the last vestiges of courage in the Old Media.

I remain hopeful that truth will out.
This scandal is, indeed, complicated with complications compounded by a purposeful and highly organized disinformation operation.
But, loose gannons abound and even the least sophisticated Attention Deficit Disordered American can focus, because of the salacious sex, long enough to have an honest gut reaction to common everyday lies.
Trash and truth, God willing, are joined hand by hand in a pincer maneuver that just might restore some new non plutocratic digital version of our beloved Old Republic.

Image: M Ryder-The Seattle Times, Daily Kos
- posted by Sean @ 12:06 AM 0 comments  

 

From Campbell Brown’s Jeff Gannon interview on this morning’s Today show, this chunk detailing current White House security procedures:

Gannon: I go to the gate. I show my driver's license, which I showed you. It has my given name. And that's how I gained entry…They allowed me to come. And apparently there isn't a very high threshold as far as somebody's personal life to gain access.

Are tourists listening?
Washington’s summer visitors can now, I guess, chuck those dull controlled White House tours and gain easy and exciting access to the infamous Briefing Room where they, too, can ask Scott McClellan a softball question.

McClellan: Go ahead, next question. No, you, the lady with the face paint, cotton candy, oversize sunglasses and disposable camera…

Modified Image: Google, AOL
- posted by Sean @ 10:35 AM 0 comments  

 

In a surprise scrubbing-related move, Talon News, the fake news service owned by GOPUSA and the nonsexual web home of prostitute and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, went dark Wednesday evening:

Talon News will be offline while we redesign the web site, perform a top-to-bottom review of staff and volunteer contributors, and address future operational procedures.

Mr. Eberle should perform a top to bottom review of using the phrase "top to bottom" while engaged in site redesign.
In a related development, popular personal lubricants Astroglide and Elbow Grease are reportedly being removed from shelves at the White House Gift Shop.

Image: Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 12:51 AM 0 comments  

 
Holy Moley!


Widely published 2003 image of the President against the presidential seal

Back in 2003, I wrote several posts about the media’s penchant for framing the presidential seal directly behind George W. Bush’s head thus giving the President the appearance of a halo.
This October 13, 2003 post shows a nice assortment of presidential “halo” images.
Over time the frequency of the presidential halo images waned as the media glorification and press manipulation of the man's image steadily waxed.
A media shamelessly prostrate before the candle-lit and incense-wreathed altar of Mr. Bush has been clearly evident during these last few days of Gannongate.
However, this morning, while leafing through the Reuters site, I discovered presidential halo photography, in these days darkened by lurid scandals, is making a comeback.

The Reuters image on the left frames our unholy President against the stars of the European Union and bears a striking similarity to Catholic iconography depicting the mother of Jesus in her incarnation as Our Lady of Lourdes.
Quand les poules auront des dents!

Images: Google, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 2:04 PM 0 comments  

 
Gannon Shocker!


Late Tuesday evening The Nashua Advocate was able to report, following an interview with Dan Pfeiffer, former spokesman for former Senate Minority Leader and US Senator Tom Daschle, that “members of the media knew” since the "summer of 2003” that the name “Jeff Gannon” was a pseudonym for an individual connected to various sexually provocative web sites and not connected to a legitimate news organization.
The Advocate reports the Daschle campaign became suspicious:

More than a year and a half ago, when Pfeiffer received an e-mail from someone claiming to be a citizen of South Dakota, wanting to know the Daschle campaign's reaction to a story by "Jeff Gannon."
The concerned "citizen of South Dakota" turned out to be Gannon himself, as the Daschle campaign quickly uncovered by tracking the e-mail account from which the query had been sent, "jdg17@aol.com." That e-mail address led Daschle campaign staffers to Gannon's AOL website…The campaign sent Gannon's website address and news of his attempted deceit of the Daschle camp to several reporters.

The Advocate only partially identifies one of the reporters who received the Daschle campaign email:

A South Dakota reporter, who asked not to be identified, has confirmed to The Nashua Advocate that he received an e-mail from the Daschle campaign containing a link to Gannon's AOL website, but said there was no evidence the Daschle campaign knew anything about Gannon's background as an escort, and he (the reporter) did not consider the e-mail an attempt to discredit Gannon.

Obviously, The Nashua Advocate has a major story on its hands but it remains to be seen if the media, clearly knee-deep in collusion regarding “Gannon”, will crack the wall of silence that has encased this scandal for the last few news cycles.
Please, follow the link, read the Advocate’s entire post and take my word that what you have read thusfar and what you will read is a major development in a major story that legitimate news organizations would normally be scrambling to cover.

Image: SDDP.org, AOL
- posted by Sean @ 12:16 AM 0 comments  

 
The Web Is Alive With
The Sound of Jeffrey


Jeff Gannon, seemingly incapable of going for more than two days without talking to a reporter, erupted like a string of short-fused firecrackers in an interview with Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher published this afternoon.
Explosively, Gannon admitted:

He had “traded information” with bloggers who are often credited with playing a key role in the defeat of Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader…”We traded information back and forth.”


Jon Lauck

Paid Thune blogger and Gannon information trader, Jon Lauck, Associate Professor of History at South Dakota State University, backtracked somewhat from his Sunday blog post in an email communication with The Nashua Advocate this afternoon:

[Lauck] no longer claims that "reporters" (plural) gave him information on the Daschle campaign's February 2004 possession of naked photographs of Jeff Gannon; he does, however, maintain that "a reporter recently told me that Daschle's campaign spokesman emailed him Gannon photos more than a year ago."


Gannon arriving at 2004's WHC Dinner

During the E&P interview, the suddenly sizzling Gannon also expressed an interest in attending this year’s April 30th White House Correspondents Dinner:

"I have every intention of attending this year's [dinner]… There is always someone there trying to make news. Maybe this year it is going to be me."

The male prostitute turned White House Correspondent had another bombshell for E&P:

Guckert said he is spending most of his time these days writing in a journal he has kept since he first began covering the White House in February 2003, a journal that could become a book."I have probably one page for each day at the White House, about 200 pages of stuff."

Meanwhile, our favorite male firecracker was packing another loud pop of a headline in yet another scandal-filled news day happening off the pages and television screens of major media, Adult Video News or AVN.com, in a report linked through AmericaBlog.org, is reporting:

Four domain names that are associated with the latest White House propaganda scandal have been placed on the market…The seller, presumably Guckert, or an agent acting on his behalf, will consider lower offers, but is seeking a minimum of $500 for the three best-known domains…The seller described the majority of the domains in plain, yet effective, words: “This is the site you have been hearing about.”

Gannon seems to want someone’s attention and appears to have moved on from the contrition he displayed during interviews with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz last week.
Has Jeff made enough noise to cross the Atlantic?

Images: jeffgannon.com, Editor & Publisher, South Dakota State University, dailykos.com
- posted by Sean @ 7:24 PM 0 comments  

 
"Bulldog" Time Tunnel


Less than 24 hours after television’s talking heads were spinning the 5 to 7 year-old secret recordings of George W. Bush admitting to drug abuse as a sign of his fun-loving nature and integrity, comes a GannonGate development that shines a light onto Washington’s more or less unspinable universal corruption.
The Nashua Advocate, a prime web source of Jeff Gannon information and context, is reporting, this morning, that Jon Lauck, one of the shill South Dakota bloggers linked to Jeff Gannon by the now discredited Thune campaign, made an interesting posted reference to the White House male prostitute on Sunday:

Reporters have recently told me that the Daschle campaign had been sending them photos of Gannon for at least a year to discredit him.

Yes, dear reader, those untrustworthy eyes of yours are working.
Lauck is stating, likely in that sniveling put-upon tone wingers affect, that former Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s campaign had embarrassing pictures of Jeff Gannon one year before the scandal became more public than Bulldog's web advertising intended on February 14th, 2005.
This raises a number of questions beginning with what a Thune partisan would hope to achieve by posting such a curious statement and why, if Jeff’s X-rated photos were given to them, these reporters, at least privately, didn’t inform their editors and the White House of a serious breech in the President’s personal security.

Jon Lauck

Of course, the Lauck information could, in Bulldog’s own words, be just “so much stuff” but, if this apparently unsophisticated South Dakota State University Assistant Professor of History’s reporting is correct, the implications of that information would confirm many peoples worst fears as described by the Advocate:

If the campaign of the Democratic Senate Minority Leader knew, in 2004, that Gannon was a gay prostitute, then all of Washington knew.
Period.
Karl Rove knew.
The White House knew.
Senators knew.
Congressmen knew.
There is absolutely no way--we repeat, absolutely no way--that freckled, dorky-looking twenty-something staffers for the Daschle campaign in South Dakota knew that a major Washington "news correspondent" was a gay prostitute and didn't tell anyone.
There's absolutely no way that the leader of the Democrats in the Senate knew a major Washington "news correspondent" was a gay prostitute and didn't tell anyone in his caucus.
And there is absolutely no way that the Daschle campaign knew anything about Gannon that the Thune campaign didn't know, given how heavily they were working the Talon News "reporter"--almost, you might say, like a prostitute.
A political prostitute.
And not, apparently, one who was any great secret--in either of the two ways he sold himself--among the power-brokers in Washington.

Lauck’s allegation, this privately held power knowledge, would, of course, explain why Gannon is the scandal that dare not speak its name among the media and political types in our sadly dysfunctional capitol.
Discuss this with family and friends and urge those concerned to express their concerns to local media and your member of Congress.
The story is still young and has not yet crossed the awareness of many of those not blessed with Internet connectivity.
A linkable example from here in the Bluegrass State is today’s publication by the Lexington Herald-Leader of Howard Kurtz's February 18th Washington Post report.
Take heart for, though I’m old enough to remember when Kentucky was 5 to 10 years behind east coast happenings, nowadays, as the Herald-Leader’s Kurtz publication suggests, Kentucky now lags a mere 4 days!

Gannon the Musical!
Watch out Seussical because this Jeff Gannon version of Manfred Mann's Do Wah Ditty, via Wonkette, could begin a hustler's path toward Broadway.

Images: 20th Century Fox, americablog.com, South Dakota State University
- posted by Sean @ 12:53 PM 0 comments  

 
Latest Anti Gay GOP Sleaze


The Bush White House, you know the supposedly Christian one that allowed a working male prostitute within the Presidential security bubble at press events and parties, is involved with another of Karl's always fun front organizations.
The purpose, this time is to trash the American Association of Retired People for their opposition to the President's plans to radically change Social Security by suggesting that they support, horror of horrors, Gay Marriage and oppose the military.
Parodies of the ad are sweeping through the liberal blogosphere.
I thought I'd parody their creepy attempt to get the elderly to contribute money towards the already cash-flush GOP/corporate effort to destroy this vital, necessary and greatly needed social program.
Follow this link and tell USANext what you think of them.
Remember to make up a fake email address and that humor is a great weapon.

Please send your hard earned dollars so doggies can continue to enjoy Poker and Golf and to insure that monkeys can have oil paintings commissioned!

Images: American Spectator, USANext, golfclubs.com, careerbuilders.com, beercollections.com
- posted by Sean @ 10:24 PM 0 comments  

 
Could 1989 become an important year in the modern day GannonGate scandal?

Johnny Grosch & Jeff Gannon

I’ve previously posted links to information about homosexual procurer and lobbyist Craig T. Spence but nothing-about 1989’s Franklin Credit Union scandal involving porno, pedophilia and big-name political figures.
The blog Rigorous Intuition offers a dot connection between Franklin and our peripatetic porn politico Jeff Gannon:

What if "(sic) John Gannon" isn't really "James D Guckert"…What if he proves to be Johnny D Gosch?

I must warn you the links herein will take you to some fairly unsavory information that has also been tainted with proximity to UFO investigations through, I would imagine, the alleged involvement of the government’s MK Ultra program.
The blog Rigorous Intuition does, however, present some interesting comparison photos and a tantalizing possibility for people who have been speculating on Jeff Gannon’s childhood and family life.

Scandal in Nebraska

Ted Gunderson Report

What Happened to Johnny Gosch?

The Day the Gonzo Died

Like so many others interested in journalism in the late 1960’s, Hunter S. Thompson was a major personal influence to the teenaged version of your humble blogger.
In the frenzy of the Watergate period, when I worked as an Editorial copyboy for the highly Republican and Watergate-blind Cincinnati Enquirer, nothing was more exciting than tearing through a fresh installment of Thompson’s reporting in Rolling Stone while huddled on my lunch break in the old Vine Street Enquirer’s dingy 3rd floor lunchroom.
Like Tom Wolfe’s Mau-Mauing the Flack-Catchers, the Doctor of Gonzo’s work gave me great pleasure and was highly influential to my developing media mind.
Thank you, Hunter.
I wish your final years had been happier.
William Rivers Pitt has a good obit that also makes a Gannon connection while providing some classic examples of Thompson’s writing.

Images: rigorousintuition.blogspot.com, indiana.edu
- posted by Sean @ 12:55 PM 0 comments  

 
Ho Hum Wead
"President Bush Tried Marijuana"


On the second day of a 4-day European tour, Dub and Dimebag hunt doobs in late night Amsterdam.
Wild-eyed President insists on avoiding Bulldog Cafe.

News From The Cartoon Closet

While the real news, I guess, is that one of the gravelly-voiced Bouvier twins is straight, Marge Simpson's heavy smoking sister Patty officially came out of the cartoon closet last night on The Simpsons.
Other cartoon characters, including the Moe Sizlack of the religious right L. Brent Bozell III, were not, according to the New York Times, pleased:

"I'd rather them not do it...Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces ?"

Why, I wonder, does the supposedly religious right always take umbrage with gay issues as having been "shoved down" their throats or, as in this case, "thrust in their faces"?
Though Patty's cartoon marriage didn't take place, she seemed happy to finally acknowledge her sexuality to her sisters.
We only hope Bozell ends up in Patty's line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Modified and Unmodified Images: Google, Reuters, FOX
- posted by Sean @ 12:02 AM 0 comments  

 
With the dawning of the Lord’s Day comes news that President Bush and Jeff Gannon are both flirting.

On Friday, the President, according to Doug Ireland (scroll down to P.S. in Feb 18th post), flirted with a young female Belgian television interviewer while, this morning in the New York Times, Jeff Gannon, again, flirts with the truth:

“All of this other stuff out there that I was given favorable treatment, access to things - is absolutely, categorically untrue.”

The prostitute turned White House Correspondent is doing his disinformational best to confuse salient questions over his very real access to the White House briefing room with blog speculation as to why he gained such rarified access.
Unlike many of the male escort’s former johns, liberal elements of the blogosphere and increasing numbers of mainstream media remain unsatisfied with Bulldog’s various positions.
Gannon’s latest reworking of a statement he has been polishing in a series of press interviews over the last several days was made Saturday in a New York Times interview and included in this morning’s profile of Robert (Bobby) Eberle the owner of Talon News and GOPUSA.
Eberle’s published remarks also strain credulity:

"Jeff did his thing, I did my thing…I don't know if I actually asked about his background and training…I had no reason to think he was not adhering to professional news standards."

Is that perfectly clear?
Mr. Eberle didn’t pay much attention to Mr. Gannon’s work and didn’t ask about his background or education so, of course, he had no reason to suspect anything less than journalism magic from the Delaware truck painter.
Yeah.

Bruce and Bobby Eberle

In the Gray Lady’s odd uninverted pyramid style of news writing, the Eberle meat is buried in the article’s final paragraphs:

Eberle said that he and some friends founded GOPUSA…They expanded by buying another conservative site called MillionsofAmericans.com [owned by Bruce Eberle and unreported in the NYT article]…[Bobby] Eberle…says he prefers to keep his current employer unidentified.

According to RawStory.com Bruce is the link between Bobby, Gannon and the political arm of the Bush administration:

Bruce ran a web site called AlGoreLost.org, which…later became MillionsofAmericans.com, which, joined Bobby’s GOPUSA in March 2004.

Notice that one story says MillionsofAmerican.org was purchased by GOPUSA while the other says the two web sites merged.
Could Bruce be the current employer Bobby would rather not divulge?
Keeping mum seems to be an Eberle family trait as RawStory reports that the Eberle boys “have refused to say how they are related.”


Kitigawa Utamaro, 1802, Oshichi Kichisa mono

I was grateful my long-awaited copy of Japanese Erotic Fantasies: Sexual Imagery of the Edo Period arrived today to soothe my Gannon poached mind with 200-year-old pornographic woodblock prints.
One of this exquisite books' contributors, Ellis Tinios, an Honorary Lecturer in the School of History at the University of Leeds in the UK, brings an interesting historical perspective to the subject of power homosexuality:

[In] ‘the way of youth’, the dominant paradigm for…male-male sexual relations, in which the partners’ respective ages determined their sexual roles. The receptive partner (wakashu) was invariably a pre-pubescent or pubescent boy…He could assume no role other than submission…The elder served as a role model to the younger and offered him protection, material support and training in manly virtues. In return the younger man was expected to be deferential, obedient and also sexually available.

Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it Bulldog, you old top you?

Images: Agence France-Presse, americablog.org, timeofgrace.org, New York Times, Hotei Publishing
- posted by Sean @ 1:14 AM 0 comments