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Coulter lied and distorted to defend "Gannon," falsely attack Democrats
and "liberal" media

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter presented a raft of lies and distortions
to defend former Talon News Washington bureau chief and White House
correspondent Jeff Gannon (aka James D. Guckert) from Democrats and the
"liberal media." Among the accusations in Coulter's February 24
nationally syndicated column were that the "liberal media" resorted to
probing Gannon's private life after failing to "get Gannon for
incompetence on the job"; that former Democratic presidential candidate
Gary Hart, former President Bill Clinton, and Senator John Kerry all
ran for office under "invented names"; and that New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd "openly lied" when writing about Gannon's White
House press passes.

"Liberals keep rolling out a series of attacks on Gannon for their Two
Minutes of 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," Coulter wrote.

In a broadside against the "liberal media," Coulter falsely claimed
that "they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job":

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
[former New York Times executive editor Howell] Raines, [CBS News
anchor Dan] Rather and [former CNN chief news executive Eason] Jordan,
they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job.

In fact, Media Matters for America has documented numerous instances of
Gannon's incompetence: He lifted large portions of White House and
Republican materials verbatim for his "news reports"; he reported a
baseless, thoroughly disproven rumor of an extramarital affair between
Kerry and an unnamed woman; and he used a fabricated quotation
attributed to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to ask a
softball question of George W. Bush.

Coulter proceeded to attack congressional Democrats for "demand[ing]
that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into the
White House under an invented name" and conflated Guckert/Gannon's use
of a pseudonym to the "invented names" of various Democratic
presidential candidates, asking: "How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe
and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for
president under invented names?" The truth is that neither Hart nor
Clinton "invented" their names, and Kerry's name was never Kohn.

Hart's parents changed the family's last name from Hartpence to Hart in
the late 1950s because, Hart said, it had been their original family
name. Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV after his deceased
father, but in high school he assumed the last name of his stepfather,
Roger Clinton, who had married his mother when Bill Clinton was 4 years
old. The Associated Press reported on March 10, 1992, that Clinton's
mother said that Roger Clinton loved Bill like a son. Kerry was born
"John Forbes Kerry" and has never held the surname Kohn; his
grandfather changed his name from Fritz Kohn to Frederick Kerry in
1901.

By contrast, James D. Guckert's name appears as such on his driver's
license. He claims he uses "Jeff Gannon" because it is easier to spell
and pronounce. He has provided no other reason for adopting the
pseudonym.

Coulter also claimed that Dowd lied when the latter wrote in her
February 17 column that "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?" Coulter
insisted that Dowd "openly lied" by "talking about two different press
passes without telling her readers." But regardless of what kind of
pass Gannon used, the fact remains, as Dowd noted, that "[i]n an era
when security concerns are paramount," Gannon "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."

=E2=80" S.S.M.

Posted to the web on Friday February 25, 2005 at 11:02 AM EST

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