Well, I'm glad the far-right wing group Accuracy in Media continues to do its part to defend America's gay male Republican prostitutes. According to an article from them today:
In fact, if you look at C-SPAN clips of White House press briefings, it seems that established and well-known reporters often chuckle and grin good-naturedly when Les Kinsolving, Jeff Gannon and others writing for online news services ask loaded questions. It seems this presence has always been part of the White House press room "culture" and that it has livened up the proceedings....Well, I don't know about you, but I would agree that the presence of a practicing male prostitute would certainly liven things up at the often dreary White House press gaggle. But I didn't realize that having gay hookers, i.e., people involved in a criminal enterprise, in the West Wing was part of our august history (oh, that's right, it is - Bush 41 had his gay hooker scandal too).
There were plenty of people in the mainstream media willing to hawk the non-story of Gannongate to an audience not versed in White House press room history. It's a shame more reporters did not make the effort to place the story in historic and factual context, as Neuman did.
Gosh, maybe AIM should suggest that Grover Norquist's weekly pow-wow of the major conservative groups include a practicing prostitute. I can only imagine how boring those meetings get otherwise. A little leather, a little porn music, and for $200 a person that'll be the best hour those uptight conservatives have spent in a long time.
And finally, my dear gay-prostitute-loving friends at AIM, it's simply amazing that your organization isn't concerned in the least that this closeted hooker was permitted to access the White House without undergoing the 3-month FBI background check that other regular White House journalists have to undergo. As I'm sure you know, to get regular access to the WH as a journalist you have to get a "hard pass." To get a hard pass you have to get a 3-month FBI background check.
But Gannon got hard pass access (i.e., ongoing regular access) even though he never applied for or received a hard pass, and even though he NEVER got the 3-month FBI background check. Had Gannon gotten such a check, the FBI would have found out that he was a practicing hooker (his last client that we know of was only 3 months before he was first spotted in the White House), and $20,000 in default on taxes unpaid from almost 15 years ago. Security would have never let him in the door.
Having undergone one of those background checks myself, I know that being involved in a criminal enterprise and being in default on a major debt makes you a rather big security risk (fortunately, I had neither). But in Gannon's case, the risk was never detected because the man was for some reason permitted to skirt the White House security rules. And the White House, conservatives, and the media have no problem with security being breached leading to someone having access to the president.
Apparently conservatives are all for special rights for gays when the gay in question is a prostitute, and the rights in question are skirting White House security rules that other journalists are required to follow.
