Here's Kurtz's Wash Post story on Gannon. And a few thoughts by me...

It's not bad (though he does fail to mention the Plame connection). To his credit, he does mention the names of the Web addresses Gannon owned - which now opens up that door to the entire media. But, I still think this story deserves a bit more than a Style section piece. I mean, we're not talking about whether Laura dyes her hair here. And I still think Kurtz's story, and the critics quoted in it, miss the main point here.

This story isn't about some guy's private life. (Not to mention, even if it were about his private life, since when was a gay private life off-limits political territory for this White House?) This story is about some nobody who owns Web addresses dealing with call-boy services getting favored access to the family-values White House, the president and internal CIA documents pertaining to Valerie Plame. It's about the White House blowing off the entire story, and claiming there are lots of reporters like Gannon at the White House. Really? Do the other White House reporters use pseudonyms and collect male prostitute URLs too? Cool. This White House is more swingin' than I thought.

Then there's the religious right, oh so silent throughout all of this. What do they think about the White House giving Mr. MilitaryEscortsM4M.com a prime seat at the table? And what do they think about the White House shrugging the whole thing off, especially since the religious right has made pornography and obscenity one of their top four issues for this entire administration (and let's not even talk about the gay angle to this story - that would be another of the 4 apocalyptic issues the religious right is focusing on). Yeah, I wonder how they feel about Scott McLellan pretty much laughing off this entire affair.

We can't stop here. And we won't. The Daily Kos-sacks are still digging away, as are the rest of us. And I suspect you aint' seen nothing yet. The White House has a lot of questions to answer. And hopefully Kurtz's story blew any journalistic reticence about reporting on this out the window.