Remember Jeff Gannon (James Guckert), the alleged gay prostitute who inexplicably was invited to the White House 200 times? Who got a daily press pass using a pseudonym? Sure you do — he’s the one who would ask ridiculously-slanted, groan-inducing softball questions for the White House, and would then publish “news” items that lifted Republican press releases word for word.
Gannon went away for a while, but now he’s anxious to make a comeback and expose the dastardly “liberal media.”
It’s been more than two years since Jeff Gannon (birth name: James Dale Guckert) resigned from Talon News, a conservative Web site for which Gannon served as White House correspondent. At the time, some theorized that Gannon was liberally granted press access in order to ask softball questions of White House officials. Others were taken aback by nude pictures of Gannon that appeared on male escort service Web pages. A few questioned his lack of journalism education and experience.
Well, Gannon’s back, and he has his claws out.
“I’m not going away,” Gannon tells Yeas & Nays. “I’m here. These people created me, and now they’re going to have to deal with me.”
Well, actually, they probably won’t deal with Gannon at all. No one took him seriously before, and they probably won’t take him seriously now.
Apparently, Gannon believes his new book will catapult him back into the limelight.
[D]on’t expect Gannon’s book to be a tawdry tell-all. Gannon says that he “deals with” his personal life in the book but adds, “My story is just a small part of it.” And besides, he’s not quite sure what all the fuss was about anyway. “It’s all irrelevant,” he says. “None of it had anything to do with my work as a reporter. … I have nothing to expose besides liberal media bias.”
Gannon says that because his book is not a saucy exposé, most major publishing houses were less interested in his manuscript. As a result, he’s elected to self-publish “Great Media War” to “maintain total control of the product.”
Well, that might be true. Or, maybe publishers weren’t interested because the book isn’t good. There are, after all, quite a few right-wing publishing houses out there that tend to enjoy books that bash traditional news outlets.
Then there was this gem:
“In my mind, I was the most honest reporter [in the White House press corps] because I was absolutely transparent with regards to my [conservative] perspective,” Gannon says. “My work has never been discredited.”
Media Matters has some helpful information that calls that claim into question.
But putting all that aside, in the unlikely event that Gannon does rise to national prominence, maybe we might finally get some answers about how, exactly, an alleged male escort was able to get entry into the White House 200 times using an assumed name. The Bush gang never got around to explaining that one, and I’ve always been kind of curious.
As Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote a few years ago, “If America’s mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D. Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins.” That never happened; the media never seemed all that interested in the controversy.
Ironically, the way the media treated Gannon is a counter-example to Gannon’s thesis. Funny how that works out.