Prof. Bainbridge whacks Joe Conason for trying to make and even bigger deal out of the Gannon story.
On that point: I’m still getting email from left-wing sites or the people who read them about what a huge deal the Gannon story is. I’m starting to feel the same way I do when I look at one of those posters with all the tiny dots which if you look at the right way you can see space ships or unicorns or whatever, because I just can’t see it. Nothing anybody has said has made this come into focus for me. So he may or may not have had a gay/sketchy/weird past. I agree he probably shouldn’t have been credentialled. But beyond that I just don’t get it. Conason et al. make a big deal that the guy was a bad writer, by their lights. Having never read his stuff, I’ll concede the possibility. Hacky writing from someone with a day pass to the White House briefing room! What a scandal!
The only angle that seems legit to me is the Plame issue. Allegedly he’s been subpoenaed — though he denies it. He’s alleged to have had access to a document that undermined Joe Wilson’s credibility. But it seems more likely that he merely had access to the Wall Street Journal which described the document. Evidence that this aspect of the Gannon story is a dud, comes in Conason’s fairly brief and uninteresting treatment of what he calls a “cameo appearance” in the Plame affair. Regardless, investigate away on that front. Though it’s not like journalists haven’t been paying attention to that stuff already.
But meanwhile I’ve had several people try to explain to me that the gay sex angle makes this story no less significant than the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jeff Gannon = Commander-in-Chief. I don’t see it.
But most people just say this proves what hypocrites conservatives are. I don’t get that either. I’d never heard of Gannon/Guckert before this story. I’d hazard to guess that’s true of most people on the right. But now we’re all supposed to be ensnared in this guy’s peccadilloes? If we never heard of him, how were we supposed to know he was supposedly gay? And if he was gay, so what? Nobody on the right has said that gays can’t be journalists or even “Republican dirty tricksters” (no pun intended). Was he trying to marry another male reporter? I just don’t get it and the more people explain it to me what a huge story it is, the smaller it gets.