Friday, March 04, 2005

Conservative Reporter, Outed Homogigolo, Security Risk?

What Byron York cast as a tongue-in-cheek statement in his article in The Hill yesterday, I will put in the form of an incredulous question: So now Democrats care about security at the White House?!?

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) appeared recently on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher....

Stop the tape! Bill Maher? HBO? Why didn't Biden just book himself onto The Daily Show on Comedy Central while he was at it? Was this a tacit admission that he didn't expect anybody serious to take what he had to say seriously?

...to demand an investigation of the controversy surrounding Jeff Gannon, the discredited Talon News reporter whose ties to gay escort websites were revealed by left-wing bloggers after Gannon asked President Bush a famously softball question at a January 26th news conference.

Investigate what, Senator Biden? We already know Gannon "goes up the down staircase." We also know that "Jeff Gannon" isn't his real name. What the hell else do you think you can dredge up about the poor bastard?

“Why isn’t every major network in the country investigating a security breach?” Biden asked during a discussion with the unlikely quartet of Maher, Robin Williams, Lesley Stahl and Tommy Thompson.

Robin Williams? Hell, with him there you didn't need Stahl or Thompson - or Maher or Biden either, come to think of it, as ol' Mork is usually at least six people before he reaches the breakfast table in the morning.

Wait, did I see the words "security breach"?

Biden continued: “How could the FBI — for 17 years, I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the ranking member; I read more FBI reports than I ever wanted to know — how could that happen, and no one had any idea who this guy was? Forget everything else. Assume he went in there and he was a saint. How could that be? We should know that. There should be — the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate should be investigating it. The House Judiciary Committee should be investigating it. And if it were the other party in charge, it would be investigated.”

Well, so much for Biden's reputation as a "serious" politician. He's apparently jumped off the the summit of Mount Moonbat along with Babs Boxer, Sheets, Lurch, the Massachusetts Manatee, et al. He's made the transition from Mounds to Almond Joy. The moveon.org collective has assimilated him.

And now Senator Plagiarist sounds as nutty as...well, as these Donks:

In the House, Representatives Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) share Biden’s deep concerns about Bush White House security.

“We have recently become aware that a Republican activist, with a potential criminal past, gained access to the White House press briefing room and presidential press conferences and was allowed to work under an assumed name,” the two lawmakers wrote last month in a letter to the Secret Service. (That “activist” with the “potential” criminal past — and who doesn’t have a “potential” criminal past? — is Gannon.)

Slaughter and Conyers also wrote to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the Government Accountability Office, asking for investigations of Gannon’s presence at White House press briefings.

Let's inject some desperately need perspective into this runaway idiocy, shall we?

First of all, against what do these Dems believe "the White House" needs to be "secured"? Are they suggesting that Gannon was a threat to the safety of the President of the United States? What, it wasn't enough to out him as a one-time sodoporn extra, run him out of D.C., get him fired, and Talon Newservice shut down for "reevalution of their operations"? Now they're smearing him as a "potential" assassin? Chrissakes, Gannon is a conservative; he didn't even ask a hostile question when it was his turn.

And that, of course, explains this PR lynching that resembles nothing so much as the political equivalent of a runaway milking machine. Gannon committed an unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the Left: he asked George W. Bush a softball question. Bush is not supposed to be asked softball questions; he's supposed to be grilled, sliced, diced, hectored, shouted at, shouted down, vilified. Letting a friendly reporter slip through the Big Media screen is like letting a hooker sneak into the Lateran Palace - blasphemy, utter blasphemy.

Never mind, of course, that softball questions were the order of the day for eight f'ing years under Dubya's predecessor. In those days the White House press corps might as well have been issued pom-poms. They were groupies, cheering squad, and choir to Revrund Slick's preaching all rolled into one.

And, of course, neither they nor the aforementioned horrified guardians of the President's obligation to be bashed, smashed, and trashed to his face on a daily basis ever got too exorcised about the appalling security lapses of the "pussy & beer" crowd that piled into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1993 like it was a new frat house. It's all recorded for posterity in harrowing, and hilarious, detail in Gary Aldrich's memoir Unlimited Access, perusal of which I strongly recommend both for the hearty guffaws to be had at Donk buffoonery and the opportunity to marvel at God's merciful providence that the nation managed to survive almost a decade with that bunch of morons, thieves, perverts, and traitors in charge and "only" suffered the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush43 White House, by gaping contrast, is professionally, classily, and tightly run. But then it isn't White House security with which people like Senator Biden are really concerned, but rather press corps security to be protected from the slightest hint or smidgen of ideological or partisan diversity in its own midst.

As far as the Left is concerned, Jeff Gannon might as well have smuggled himself into the College of Cardinals wearing a French tickler and a space helmet. For that he must be punished forever.

I have no doubt that if the Dems were in the majority in Congress (they still run it, but work with me here...) they would indeed be trying to transmogrify this poor schlep and his hanging slider query into Watergate II. So do most Americans, which is why the Dems aren't in the majority in Congress, and won't be for the foreseeable future.

While George Bush and the GOP are out transforming the world, the Democrats are chasing a gay escort.

Boy, some things never change, huh?