From the Rapid City Journal. Still percolating, this story.
"If this would have been a liberal reporter who was caught as a gay prostitute advertising himself for sex, John Thune and Dick Wadhams and the far right would have been attacking him vociferously," Hildebrand said.Then, of course, we have GannonGuckert issuing his standard totally contradictory admission/denials:
But the most important part of the story was that a person with that background and no legitimate journalism standing got White House press access, he said....
During a telephone interview Friday, Gannon declined to discuss his personal life or involvement in the sexually oriented Web sites.Oh, where to begin? Mistakes in your past? You were soliciting prostitution on the Web up until a week ago. You found God's redemption? Was that before or after you tried to sell your male prostitution Web address for $7500 a pop last week? There are some wild and inaccurate things out there about you? Like what? We proved you're a male hooker, and you've refused to deny it in interview after interview - are you still trying to cast doubt on that? Also, when you charge $200/hour and $1200/weekend for sex it's not your "personal life" - it's your business, otherwise you wouldn't be required to pay taxes on it (speaking of which...). And finally, your being a prostitute shouldn't reflect badly on Thune, Bush or the conservative cause? Really, because they welcome gay prostitutes now? Funny, I thought they were all pushing to write all gays out of the Constitution. Now they welcome us? Especially hookers?
"Like anyone else, I have a past. I made mistakes in my past. And there are things I've done in the course of my life that I'm not proud of," Gannon said. "But I've had good fortune, and I believe in a God of redemption . who will allow you to leave the past in the past."
Gannon said that although some of what people said was true, there also were "so many wild, inaccurate things out there," in relation to his personal life.
"That's the reason I haven't been talking about it," he said. "There will be a time for that, but while this whole thing is going on, I couldn't deal with it. I have a team of lawyers looking at all the things out there, who said what."
Nothing in his past personal life should reflect poorly on Thune, President Bush or the conservative cause, Gannon said.
Thune's campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000 to be research consultants. Van Beek now works for Thune, and Lauck continues to help maintain the conservative political blog, South Dakota Politics. Lauck said the recent publicity about Gannon's personal life didn't mean that his reporting was inaccurate, or invalid.Senator Thune's office defends gay prostitution as simply "someone's personal life." God bless America.
"It's weird, but I try to leave personal lives out of it," Lauck said.
