Maureen Dowd on separate realities

I’m still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the “Barberini Faun” is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?
At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I’d been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he’d renew the pass – after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.
In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend?
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With the Bushies, if you’re their friend, anything goes. If you’re their critic, nothing goes. They’re waging a jihad against journalists – buying them off so they’ll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.
At last month’s press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could work with Democrats “who seem to have divorced themselves from reality.” But Bush officials have divorced themselves from reality.
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Even the Nixon White House didn’t do anything this creepy. It’s worse than hating the press. It’s an attempt to reinvent it.

Posted by: b | Feb 17 2005 9:15 utc | 1