1. Excellent summation of recent stories from Dan Froomkin at the Wash Post.
Religious conservatives apparently coming around on male prostitution:2. Gannon/Guckert plays all hurt-puppy with the hometown paper:Tim Graham, who served as White House correspondent for a national weekly Christian news magazine, had this to say on National Review's The Corner blog: "[A]s a one-time White House correspondent that asked clearly conservative (but tough) questions in the briefing room, I can only say I'm glad I got out before the left-wing bloggers exposed my unnatural attraction to sugared kiddie cereals. Can we start at square one and agree that these very personal attacks on Jeff Gannon are creepy coming from the libertine left?"Ethicist who has a problem with making sure people don't have links to criminal activity before entering the White House:
He added: "The White House press corps is not supposed to be a gang beating. It's supposed to present White House comment on the news of the day. Are the people really served by seventeen phrasings of the same attack question? Are they harmed by one question on a topic conservatives are interested in?"Wirzbicki and Savage quote her saying that the investigation of Gannon's personal life crossed traditional boundaries and was characterized by "mean-spiritedness and snarkiness. . . . Those are not tactics you would see practiced in most traditional newsrooms."
"There are people out there who will turn people's lives inside out," Guckert said. "They tried to intimidate me, punish me. Then they tried to embarrass me, and they've done a pretty good job of that."Those people are called "Republicans."
3. Very good summary story on Alternet.
James Pinkerton, a media critic for Fox News, told the online magazine Salon.com. He recalled that in the six years he worked for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the White House was "strict about who got in. It's inconceivable to me that the White House, especially after 9/11, gives credentials to people without doing a background check. ... If [Gannon] was walking around the White House with a pass that had a different name on it than his real name, that's pretty remarkable."
Olbermann on his TV show Wednesday referred to Gannon as "HBO's Ali G, without the satire."4. Eric Boehlert in Salon.com
He also noted that he's a graduate of Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism -- which is a two-day, $50 seminar run by Morton Blackwell, a longtime Republican activist who co-founded the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and has said that those on "the ultra left harness hate and envy in their quest for unlimited power."
Gannon: "I'm a two-holiday Christian and I usually vote Republican."
- vs. -
Gannon in the next paragraph: "I'm a Christian. Not only by birth, but by rebirth through the blood of Jesus Christ."
