Ok, admittedly, I am a huge fan of Maureen Dowd. And, she has been on a roll with the Gannon/Guckert story.
In her column today about Bush and the media, she wrote:
The only balance W. likes is the slavering, Pravda-like "Fair and Balanced" coverage Fox News provides. Mr. Bush pledges to spread democracy while his officials strive to create a Potemkin press village at home. This White House seems to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names; it prefers tossing journalists who protect their sources into the gulag to giving up the officials who broke the law by leaking the name of their own C.I.A. agent.Note to other journalists: this is an accurate description...."self-advertised male escort." You aren't really invading the privacy or outing someone who advertises on-line.
Also, today, she was on a panel on Meet the Press with Tom Friedman and William Safire. Answering a question about Bush and foreign policy, she worked in a comment about how the Gannongate...didn't mention him by name...just the idea that the Bush people liked having him in the press corps. Russert, Friedman and Safire all got a big yuck out of that one.
Maureen Dowd just gets it. Love her.
