Hypocritical Ripples
I'm quite enjoying this whole Jeff Gannon / Jim Guckert story and all the stuff swirling about it. Recall: "Jeff" (we now have to use the quotation marks so you know it's a pseudonym, although I think "Jeff" is a perfectly good name myself) is the [apparently] gay-male prostitute who pretended to be a journalist and was inexplicably given press credentials by the White House so that he could ask remarkably easy and partisan "questions" of the press secretary and the president. What's fun is not really the stone thrown into the pond, but all the ripples on the pond that grow out from the disturbance.
Predictably, the reactionary press is dabbing at its crocodile tears and lamenting the fact that a top-notch journalist who happens to be "conservative" could be hounded out of his job by nasty, mean-spirited liberal bloggers who are no better than communists, really. And besides, in this day and age, why must a nice, respectable homosexual in a respectable profession (the oldest one in the world!) be vilified by a bunch of people who were thought to be homo-lovers anyway? (Why, it's as bad as all those racist Democrats who would vote against Condolezza Rice or Alberto Gonzales just because they are black and hispanic!)
Of course, this is all bullshit, and obviously so. On the other hand, it is thigh-slappingly entertaining to listen to this whole bunch of reactionaries going on about how everyone's hounding this poor, defenseless, honorable guy who happens to be queer. It's also a lovely demonstration of the operating of the reactionary smoke-and-mirror machine, since the seriously important issue here has nothing to do with any of that.
In fact, there's a whole lot of stuff that Gannongate has nothing to do with:
- Gay-male prostitution — I'm sure it titillates a number of people, and "Jeff" is not unpleasant to look at, but so what? Unlike all those who proclaim that it makes no difference to them while, secretly, they are shocked at the idea of a GMP (gay-male prostitute), I don't really care. I'm gay, and I write pornography for fun and [very little] profit. If I could make money selling my body, I probably would.
- Closeted Gay Republicans — I have no sympathy for closeted republican homos, and I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of outing the hypocrites for their complicity in the continued denial of civil rights to gay people; however, that has little to do with the Gannon case since, quite evidently, he's not all that closeted to begin with, and it's pretty clearly not the gay revelations per se that have driven him undergound, although many people would like us to think so and, in so thinking, look no further.
- Softball Questions — get over it! Do reactionary mouth-pieces really think that we progressive, right-thinking types could prossibly waste this much indigniation over some faux reporter because we're upset that he asks easy questions? They misunderestimate us if they do.
- Hypocrisy, or Don't Blame the Messenger — It's not Gannon who's the target of the interest here anyway. He's the agent, the catalyst, a mere synecdoche for immoral and illicit White-House activities. Consider the case of the sanctimonious abstainer proclaiming "Lips that touch alcohol shall never touch mine" turning out to be an ahcoholic: you hold the alcoholic responsible, not the liquor.
No, the question here focuses on the White House. Why in the world would they, in all their homophobic zeal, keep giving press passes to a gay-male prostitute pretending to be a journalist using a pseudonym that the White House claims not to have known wasn't his real name? (NB: Either they claim that they didn't know, in which case their security systems are totally inadequate to uncover what anyone with an internet connection can see, or they did and they chose to overlook it for reasons yet to be adequately explained.)
Hypocritical though it is, it's not the hypocrisy of the White House that's the point, either. Rather, the hypocrisy is like the flashing lightbulbs on the giant, illuminated arrow pointing at the White House saying "there's something funny going on over there". That's where the real question is.