The Hotline is a big inside-the-beltway publication read by all.
Amid the semi-hysteria over the blogosphere's growing influence, one important question has been left largely unanswered: Does anything go? -- Bloggers have claimed credit for at least helping to bring down several journos in recent months -- Dan Rather and Mary Mapes at CBS, CNN's Eason Jordan and conservative WH reporter James "Jeff Gannon" Guckert. All three episodes featured ideological bloggers either uncovering new facts about these folks or raising questions about their work. But the Guckert episode alone has included a focus on his personal life. -- The cry from bloggers and voices on the left is: How does an (apparent) gay prostitute get (alleged) access to classified gov't documents? (Wouldn't Bob Barr have already called for a special prosecutor if this were 1997?) But if Guckert's personal life is an issue, are the private lives of all reporters now fair game? Aside from issues like Guckerts, legal records, financial matters and even pure gossip could offer a wealth of targets for those web warriors with a grudge. Where does it end, and who's next? Does this mean reporters now know what life's like for a political candidate?More blah blah blah about Jeff Gannon's private life being offlimits. Let's all say it again, loud and clear. Jeff's previous job, and apparently current job since the Web sites are still live, is not his private life any more than outing Hotline reporters as, well, Hotline reporters is their private life. Whether they like or not, whether I like it or not, running a prostitution service goes against every family value that this administration and Guckert supposedly stand for.
Where was the high-and-mighty Hotline when George Bush, with the help of buddies like Guckert, tried to write me and 20 million of my friends out of the Constitution last year? Where was Accuracy in Media, the conservative bloggers, and everyone else who is defending Guckert's "private life" when my private life was going to singled out and savaged in our nation's most sacred document simply to get a few votes?
You've got a lot of nerve, Hotline. The entire GOP and its mainstream media sympathizers have a lot of nerve. We're talking about a hooker getting special access to the White House, the president, and intelligence information, and somehow everyone has suddenly discovered a conscience about homosexuals and hookers. Oh how I wish that conscience were real. But it's not. Bash a fag, bash a whore, and the GOP eats it all up. They throw us to their hateful, bigoted religious right buddies for votes with glee, while Mary Cheney cowers in the corner and Ken Mehlman runs for the shelter of the off-the-record quote.
Well newsflash Washington. The GOP is the one that rose gay-bashing and gay-baiting and sex-baiting to an art, and JeffJimGuckertGannon willingly joined the family values parade in print and in passion. They're trying to ban condoms, pornography, AIDS education. They take children away from gays, and want to make our very lives a crime. GOP Senators compare us to kleptomaniacs, alcoholics, and man-dog sex. And they can't even handle a bronze breast on a statue.
And we're the ones picking a fight over sex.
Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit now that those of us in the gay community and on the left have finally - finally - started to fight fire with fire by simply holding you to the very standards you legislate over us. We are simply giving the GOP the sex-less utopia it's always wanted. How does it feel?
Oh, gee, the Hotline warns, this might establish a precedent. Really? You mean the GOP might respond by using our sex lives against us as a weapon to destroy us and curry votes with bigots?
I don't like this battle, I don't enjoy this battle. I hate this battle. But the battle began years ago, and until now, we sat back and watched and waited and hoped it would go away. Well it's not going away. We have a choice. We can sit back and watch the GOP sex police destroy us. Or we can fight back. And I can think of nothing more poetic, nothing more just, than fighting back by simply holding them to their own standards.
PS And don't even get me started on Valerie Plame.
