Makes one reminisce about the old days when the President of The U.S. was only after young co-eds.

Posted by: ROGNM | Feb 15 2005 23:42 utc | 4

You folks think billmon has read or heard of walter benjamin? His blog which I’ve just started to read backwards is like the arcades project of C21.
Some of my friends were on the other side of the lines to him in Davos with pirate flags

Posted by: slugger o toole | Feb 16 2005 0:20 utc | 6

Yeah, as I said in Kos, what is interesting is that Gannon is linked to the Plame leaking. With Judith Miller and hopefully soon Bob Novak forced to answer or be jailed, one can only hope that they will go after Gannon. And when they’ll begin to ask tough questions, they may as well want to have complete discolusre about his “other” activities, including a comprehensive list of his customers.
That said, if Guckert really tried to blackmail his way into the WH, he’s insane and may well end up dead soon. There’s no way he could have blackmailed a higher-up (W, Cheney, Condi, …) because he would already be dead; but if he tried to trick McClellan, W, Cheney or even Rove may not have known exactly what happened, and they must be mad right now, wanting to stop this ridiculous nonsense right now.
What is puzzling is why he’s in the Plame stuff if he was just linked to the 2nd tier – only explanation is that Scottie told him, stupidly, and the investigation on Plame affair showed that he wasn’t a major player in it, just a wannabe that happened to hear about it and decided to play the insider.
But, all in all, if he partly forced his way in, the leftist blogosphere is definitely not what he should fear the most right now – and even if he was on order from Rove, he’d better be careful not to fly small planes.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 16 2005 0:25 utc | 8

Use of salacious deeds of these hypocrits as fodder to attack them seems wrong to me. the sanctimony of consensual sex should be preserved even if the puritans can be embarassed by their sexual foibles.
on the other hand, if the guy was trolling the press corps to compile dossiers against homosexual enemies of bush, well…

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 16 2005 0:32 utc | 10

I’m thinkin right now, “It is all coming apart.”
To let them get away with all these crimes after being so exposed would be a wimpy thing to to. Like, “Fuck me in the ass I love it!”
C’mon we can’t all be bottoms can we?

Posted by: rapt | Feb 16 2005 0:47 utc | 12

Could someone please explain to me what the heck is going on? I was starting to get used to the unreality of the present time, but this whole Gannon thing is just weird. Okay, someone who may or may not have been a male escort got into a White House press conference without basically any credentials. That could happen. He got in regularly over two years. For an Administration obsessed with security, that’s really hard to explain. He got called on by the President, and proceeded to lob him softball questions. With this crowd, I assume that nothing happens by accident. Okay, so far we’ve got some fairly typical (for this bunch) sleaze, a sad commentary on modern America but sort of within normal parameters. But this male escort with no press credentials gets confidential materials that he (or somebody) uses to reveal the identity of one of the U.S.’s most valuable covert agents, and nobody even glances at him? I’m not sure I can come up with a conspiracy theory bizarre enough to explain this.

Posted by: Aigin | Feb 16 2005 1:28 utc | 14

My totally speculative guess. Guckert got a favor from someone important in the white house because they were “close.” He was willing to pimp for the White House in the press briefings…what’s the diff?…and I think he’s really into being a…butch? homosexual.
He was “useful.” He started to think he was really a reporter. He was fed information to discredit Plame.
Other reporters in the White House briefing room thought something wasn’t quite on the up-and-up with that guy, Gannon. Some complained, but who, really, was going to do anything about it?
Gannon went too far in the Bush press conference when he talked about dems being “divorced from reality.” It was too blatant…and again, sounded like a payback for the swipe by Susskind when he was quoting Bushies who sneered about “the reality based community.”
Media Matters made it a big deal. They looked back at his record. SusanG was struck by the Plame angle. She lit a fire at dKos.
Gannon was caught with his pants down, so to speak, because so many people were looking into his past.
Now its time for Fitzgerald to do a much better job than Starr ever did. If Gannon was a “journalist” because one of his tricks or boyfriends did him a favor…does that make Gannon a legit journalist? If Talon doesn’ t fit the description of a legit news org, based upon the White House Corr. Asso., does that mean Gannon does not qualify as a real journalist, and therefore cannot use the protection of sources defense?
Maybe Fitzgerald will have to look at how Gannon got his position. I don’t know the precedent in any other such incidents, as far as such an investigation goes.
But, what if whoever got Gannon in isn’t the same person that outed Plame? Maybe Gannon will be able to make a deal (with his “friend’s” interests in mind as well) to give information and in return, the friend’s identity will be protected…if the friend got the info to Gannon secondhand.
…the friend, in other words, could disclose information in order to protect his privacy and to keep himself out of jail.

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 16 2005 1:52 utc | 16

fauxreal, your analysis seems one of the best I’ve seen – good, sound points. I think Guckert has exhausted his usefullness – whether he was a White House plant or not. Someone got him the day pass as a ‘favor’ – he proved himself a useful player in the game.
Even if they had no connection to him getting the press gig, this White House would not have frowned on his behavior if it helpled them, and they certainly would have looked the other way if his creds were a little shady (Bernie Kerik comes to mind).
What we need to find out is: Who got him the day-pass gig?
We also need to clarify whether or not he was shopped for the Plame story by the 2 senior admin leakers who talked to Novak; or whether he read the WSJ article and “plagerized” Cloud’s info about the memo to lend credibility to himself to use in his interview with Amb. Wilson.

Posted by: Voodoo | Feb 16 2005 2:24 utc | 18

for a laugh, here somebody implies it has to do with mr. gannon’s bald scalp and the preznit’s adolescent character.
IMO the next chapter of this story will be that lots of people will start turning up dead of “natural causes”, gannon and any associates in the know right up front. it will not be necessary for him to even try to extort one of the higher-ups for him to get snuffed, as somebody upthread said, but he has become a major embarassment and that is the way US presidents deal with this kind of thing as is obvious from reading thru the various body lists of previous US administrations circulating on the net.
gannon is a marked man regardless of his intentions because he could be called before a court to testify, and even if he himself is the unwitting fall guy in the scheme of somebody else (what i suspect he is), he still could imply others, insiders. and that is far more dangerous to them than any feeble extortion attempts on mr. gannons side.

Posted by: name | Feb 16 2005 3:55 utc | 20

georgia10 has an interesting diary about the White House (whoever does this) being responsible for issuing Guckert his daily press passes, day after day after day…and that his real name would have to have been known.
for that reason, I think Guckert had to have been a plant. considering the level of security around Bush…I’m sure the secret service investigates the towel rack before Bush takes a piss…there is no way that whomever issued press passes was unaware of Guckert’s identity on some level.
But, Voodoo, you do raise an important question about Guckert’s source for information when he interviewed Wilson, considering Rush complained about Guckert cribbing from Rush’s lies.
Maybe Guckert did get in over his head because of his desire to discredit anyone who disagreed with Bush. In that case, Guckert would merely serve to expose to the religious right the extent of gay acceptance among the Bush power brokers, and the further hypocrisy of the gay-baiting the republicans do to get out the talibornagain vote.

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 16 2005 4:55 utc | 22

Just checked Almartinraw.com – sorry I didn’t do it before conjecture above. His lead story is: “Fairy Godmother Rules:Karl Rove & the Gay Republican Mafia”. Anyone have a subscription, or want to pay a few bucks on line (it’s monthly) & return w/the goods?

Posted by: jj | Feb 16 2005 5:07 utc | 24

jj-
Here’s a cache of stories about Spence (who Billmon mentions in his post.)
tbrnews has made the association b/t Guckert and Spence here)
Seems like power-tripping can get more than weird…just ask Caligula.
The military and other extreme hierarchical (i.e. political conservatives, strict religious) organizations would seem to be a haven for sado-masochistic homosexuals who need the self and other loathing…and would make them ripe for blackmail, both in deed and in psychological make up.
(I say, as I light my Sigmund Freud cigar…because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar..even if it is in a female’s mouth…ahem…sorry, all this is so bizarre, I have to make a joke. Siggy would have something to say about that too, I seem to vaguely recollect.)

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 16 2005 5:53 utc | 26

Beating up on this guy is, in my opinion, a great big mistake–first and foremost because beating up on anyone always diminishes us. True, you can spin out some sort of conspiracy theory about bad boys, but what’s the point of that exercise? It’s easy, it’s cheap, and goes to the heart of absolutely nothing whatsoever. There are other, more pertinent, and more urgent, ways to attack the bad deeds of this White House. The only “conspiracy” that counts, in my view, is the one that’s staring us in the face–namely the malice, the cowardice and the bloodlust of the President himself.

Posted by: alabama | Feb 16 2005 6:30 utc | 28

DeA,
As simple as it sounds, thats exactly what they want — It’s what Bushes “gut” feelings are all about, and the people who like him know this.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 16 2005 7:03 utc | 30

WaPo media commentator Howard Kurtz: Online Nude Photos Are Latest Chapter In Jeff Gannon Saga

In most Beltway melodramas, the resignation ends the story. The problem for Gannon, whose real name is James Dale Guckert, is that he told The Washington Post and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last week that he never launched the Web sites whose provocative names he had registered, such as hotmilitarystud.com. But a Web designer in California said yesterday that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had posted naked pictures of Gannon at the client’s request.
The latest developments were first reported by John Aravosis, a liberal political consultant and gay activist who has a Web site called americablog.org. “What struck me initially was the hypocrisy angle,” Aravosis said. He said he was offended by what he called Gannon’s “antigay” writing.
…
Gannon is also embroiled in the Valerie Plame story. In 2003 he interviewed Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, after unnamed administration officials leaked her role as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak. According to his Talon News story, Gannon asked Wilson about “an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel [detailing] a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports.”
…
To top things off, the Wilmington News-Journal, citing court records, reported Saturday that Gannon — or Guckert actually — failed to pay Delaware more than $20,700 in personal income tax from 1991 through 1994.
…
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the trade publication Editor & Publisher that he didn’t know Gannon was using a pseudonym until recent weeks and that he was cleared into the White House on a daily basis using his real name. “People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors,” McClellan said. He said he has discussed the Gannon matter only “briefly” with the president.

So now the whole story is confirmed in the MSM (main stream media) and the reporters will call their sources to find more. Lets see if such pressure will find a leak.

Posted by: b | Feb 16 2005 8:50 utc | 32

While I do enjoy kicking “Gannon” in his privates I can also see alabama’s point in a big way. There is a much bigger prize than one outed prostitute. If the light can be shined on the rot and disease that make up this administration it may just all fall apart. All this backslapping and high-fiving will quickly be forgotten and most likely even remembered with scorn if focus is lost.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 16 2005 17:07 utc | 34

The upper – or richer classes today – have always claimed sexual licence and impunity therefor as privilege. (After all, who wants house boys and golf courses and yachts and ..if you can’t f** whom you please? Did the Lords of the Manor consider servant girls a commodity?)
All those contraints (against homosex, babies on demand, contraception, but for monogamous marriage and restraint, etc. etc.) are not to be applied to them. ‘Morality’ is for the poor saps who who bow down, not for their betters. From the Catholic church (biggest institution in the world today) to Bush (pres. of the world), the attitude is always the same. (DeA said similar …)
If Bush or a family member needed the results of stem cell research to be cured of deadly disease they would never hesitate. They know stem cell research is going on in many places, and realise that other countries can do it as well as the US. Better maybe – specially if paid for!
The emphasis on ‘morality’ is a cheap trick to keep the proles in their places, and disaproving of each other – see Blue vs. Red in the US today. Then blackmail becomes a potentially deadly arm. But only in a few isolated cases – after all the stupid and weak have to take their licks. Today, even exposure has been sanitised. The powerful are so strong that even murderous rape is never exposed or condemned. It is just like in the Mediaval castle.
Minor scandals about rent-boys titillate the public and provide more dreams; if the poor could just join the club, they could marry and divorce at will, and…and…rent boys..the rich can have them..and…
Meanwhile, life goes on.

Posted by: Blackie | Feb 16 2005 18:57 utc | 36

Having Gannon in the press pool every day was a sign, a warning. But to whom?
If he had information damaging to the White House, they wouldn’t invite him in every day–they would make him go away one way or another. There may be a rent boy network in the Norquist-Greenspan-Murdoch axis of power, but I doubt that digging into the Gannon story will get at that.
Instead, my gut tells me that Gannon was in the press room as a sign to someone else to pull their punches during the election season or risk being exposed. I mean, look how soon after the election Gannon lost his spot of prestige–he was a nobody, an obvious numbskull, and yet no one in the press room could touch him. I think that if the Gannon investigation goes farther, we’ll find out that he had romped with some senior and respected members of the media. Or some senior Democratic consultants. Or even an elected Democrat or two, of the centrist bi-partisan, DINO persuasion so well loved in DC.
That’s my guess. Gannon was used to troll for dirt, found some, and placed prominently so as to remind someone powerful to lay down and let Bush win. Now that it worked, Gannon goes away, though perhaps not before blowing someone’s cover after all, and having the blame for this fall on overzealous bloggers.

Posted by: jlw | Feb 16 2005 20:00 utc | 38

jlw,
That is the first sensible explanation I’ve seen. Oddly, it has Rove’s greasy fingerprints all over it too.

Posted by: rapt | Feb 16 2005 20:26 utc | 40

Anna Missed: I didn’t see the movie. Care to elaborate?
Rapt: More and more, I’ve come to believe that the Democrats fail because they are told to fail. That the GOP has developed an extensive blackmail network and has the goods to break many of the key figures in Washington and in the media. (Those that they don’t have the goods on, and who have the termidity to stand up to them, they can undermine through compromised proxies.) That it’s a fixed game and even when you think you’ve won one (such as in 1992) you wind up losing.
I mean, sure, there are plenty of people in key places, especially in the media–John Stossel, Lisa Myers, Chris Vlasto–who are doing what they are doing for pure partisan reasons, no blackmail needed. And there are economic/institutional reasons for the establishment shift away from the Democrats. But the Democrats of late have been punchless, inept, doing just enough to compete but far less than is necessary to win. By all rights, the Democrats should have prevailed in the last three cycles, but each time they have flailed at both the strategic and personnel level.
Chance? Probably. Maybe. But when your generals keep leading your troops into slaughter, you begin to wonder which side they are on. And it doesn’t seem outrageous to me to think that many in the Democratic leadership are content to make a good show of opposition rather than pulling out all stops to keep the GOP from carrying out its agenda.
Washington used to be a place that looked the other way. Drunks and gropers and pederasts were treated gently and rarely outed. Think of all the years that John Tower and Bob Packwood could carry on in public obscurity. During the run-up to the Conservative Ascendency, I think DC became a place that took notes while pretending to look the other way. Now, too many people are compromised–and yet unwilling to step aside–for the Democrats to mount much opposition. If my hypothesis is correct, then Gannon was placed where he was because he had the goods on someone very highly placed and yet too important in that place to destroy outright. Someone–or more than one–who could influence how the election turned out.
Granted, I base this supposition on little more than observation from outside the beltway. No proof, no evidence, just a hypothesis based on watching the proud Democrats fade into the Washington Generals. But it’s a hypothesis that argues for building the opposition to the Adminstration outside DC, for taking back statehouses and city halls rather than regaining Congress. For finding some small state governor to run in 2008 rather than yet another senator.
I think that those of us on the leftish side of things are going to have to stop looking to Washington for saviors–even for solutions–for some time. Even the people there who claim they are our friends are likely unable to help us at all.
Whew. That’s more than I meant to say.

Posted by: jlw | Feb 16 2005 21:55 utc | 42

From the distaff: Maureen Dowd weighs in.

Posted by: beq | Feb 17 2005 14:09 utc | 44

Sorry, this link should work: Link

Posted by: Fran | Feb 17 2005 14:49 utc | 46

Puzzle part? Barberini’s Faun.

Posted by: beq | Feb 18 2005 12:25 utc | 48