Far >From Straight
In a mainstream media climate different from the one in which we seem to be living, disclosures concerning the White House’s relationship with the press in recent weeks would probably have exploded onto the national stage. But three major stories have come out and they’re all quietly dying. First, three different syndicated columnists were revealed to have accepted payments from the Bush administration - one was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars - to write stories backing its positions. “There needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, “ said the President in January, explaining why they wouldn’t be doing that anymore. Then there were the revelations about pretend TV news stories with nice-looking people playing real reporters, but that were actually produced by 20 or more government agencies including the departments of Defense and State. Distributed via satellite for insertion into local news programs nationwide, our government’s “stories” pushing everything from regime change in Iraq to Medicare reform have been airing unedited and unattributed in just about every media market in the country. Any of this use of your tax dollars starting to make you just a little uncomfortable?
But by far the strangest disclosure in recent weeks concerns the administration’s relationship with one “Jeff Gannon,” a pseudonym for an ex-marine named James Guckert who worked for a Texas-based direct marketing and fundraising company called GOPUSA. For almost two years starting in February 2003, Guckert was given prized credentials and full run of the White House press office, ostensibly working for an internet news service called Talon News, which the Capital Hill press office refused to credential, deciding it was a propaganda service and not a legitimate news organization. A regular fixture however at the White House and frequently called on for questions by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Guckert apparently served as a key “inside” source for Sean Hannity of Fox News, while often posting White House press releases as his own work on Talon’s website.
So integral was Guckert/Gannon to the White House press office that he was reportedly one of 4 people given a classified memo which, when leaked to conservative columnist Robert Novak, blew the cover on CIA agent Valerie Plame, in apparent retribution for the honesty of her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who’d angered the White House by reporting that Iraq had not actually tried to obtain uranium from an African country few people have heard of. Guckert has since denied he had access to classified information about Plame. What he hasn’t denied though, is that when he wasn’t at the White House he was often servicing other clients as a $200 an hour gay prostitute who sold himself on his websites including HotMilitaryStud.com and MilitaryEscorts.com. This would still be going on had Guckert not blown his “journalist” cover by asking a question so ridiculous at a presidential press conference that every real journalist in the room had to stop and ask themselves who is this guy? The weird thing is the person who called on him to ask that question was President Bush, who somehow managed to pick him out from a sea of waving hands.
Frankly we don’t care in the least about Guckert’s private life, any more than we’d care if the whole White House Press Office turned out to be gay or Canadian or they all liked Milky Way bars. Those things are their business, not the publics. We do care though about how someone like Guckert, whose anatomy and particulars were on full view all over the internet, managed to get daily access to the White House for almost two years, how he passed secret service and FBI background checks to get there, and how he of all people, may have been selected to leak classified CIA documents and serve as a back channel to Fox News, the administration’s unofficial spokeschannel.
One might think that in an era of homeland security, a professional hooker gay or straight might have trouble getting security clearance to question the President. A fair number of Congress people have questions about it, though whether their inquiries on Guckert’s credentialing go very far remains to be seen. A number of Washington journalists seem to believe that given Karl Rove’s tight control over the White House, it’s almost impossible Guckert could have been there without at least his tacit approval. And Rove, who never gives interviews, did manage to make time to be interviewed by GOPUSA. We don’t know what’s going on at the White House, but to us it seems like it’s getting progressively stranger. If the “bloggers”, the independent researchers who are actually rustling up much of the hard news these days can be believed, Washington is now awash in rumors that the Republican Party at the national level is, well, basically run by gay men. Ken Mehlman, Chair of the Republican National Committee has been reportedly “outed” in recent weeks, as has GOP National Field Director Ken Gurley and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. We certainly don’t know if these allegations are true, but like lots of media people we’ve been tracking this stuff in amazement as the weeks go by.
Like with Guckert, we don’t care about the personal lives of any of these people. But if there’s fire where there’s smoke, there’s also a huge irony that a party whose last national campaign put 11 anti-gay marriage amendments on state ballots and successfully pulled out an enormous anti-gay vote may have in part been orchestrated by gays. That to us would be the most bitter kind of hypocrisy, and if it’s true, what it affirms is that the opposite of straight isn’t gay, it’s crooked.
At a time when a handful of media companies control most of our access to information, credible and independent reporting is getting harder to find. We’ll keep trying to do our part but our part’s small. What really matters is our own critical thinking and our willingness to be real with ourselves and others. We wish everyone a sunny Mud Season, hard sap runs for those who’ve tapped, and of course, a joyous Easter.