More info from another republican shill

By Ann Coulter (best hold your crucifix as you read this)

In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor
Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan,
liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people
sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for
unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than
CIA (news - web sites) agents.

Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter



The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon
News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White
House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort
service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like
gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and
find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a
moment-to-moment basis?

Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for
their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall
apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he
may be gay.

First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a
press pass so that he could ask softball questions -- a perk reserved
for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was
that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied
press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a Web site that
no one has ever heard of -- but still big enough to be a target of
liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no
viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters
have them?)

On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about
the press pass, saying: "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?"

Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows
that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.
Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while
someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.

But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her
readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification").
Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost
anyone can get a daily pass -- even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd
could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are
altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a
lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's
deception.)

Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is
"James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the
Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a
right-wing Web site get inside the White House press briefings and
presidential news conferences?"

Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert
used to play journalist" -- as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to
play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist
because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a
gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how
many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com"
and laughing.

Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry
Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner -- aka Larry King, Geraldo
Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a
newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev
Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric
Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of
The New Republic.

Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a
fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is.
(She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As
Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from
her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such
things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor
investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while
writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and
John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton (news - web sites) and John Kerry
(news - web sites)) run for president under invented names? Admittedly,
these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service;
they were merely Democrats running for president.

Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to
retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like The New
York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an
obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines,
Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the
job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on TV
and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving
our gays are more macho than their straights.)

Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed.
Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon
consists solely of their claim that he is gay.