"So you're not gay if you're on top."
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Jon Stewart cut to the chase about the GOP hypocrisy that embraces both the demagogic political exploitation of homophobia and gays at the top of the Republican Party and Internet gay hookers posing as journalists. Stewart said of the GOP support for Gannon/Guckert (who indicated that he was a dominant homosexual on one of his prostitution websites): "So you're not gay if you're on top."
That about sums it up for the GOP, which is using its usual shills -- such as Howard Kurtz, Michael Isikoff, and Wolf Blitzer -- to portray Gannon/Guckert as a victimized gay. They did the same thing when they claimed Clarence "Step'n Fetchit" Thomas was the victim of a Democratic attack on blacks. Given that Republicans get political mileage out of opposing affirmative action and the like, it's kind of hard to swallow (excuse the imagery) the argument that Democrats weren't going to let a Hispanic like Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales become the first Hispanic Attorney General because they are discriminatory, whatever his faults -- and sanctioning of torture and the executions of possibly innocent people are pretty big ones to overlook.
Whoever thought the Republicans in the White House would be advising Gannon/Guckert and orchestrating his defense? As many a wag has recently noted, Gannon/Guckert gives new meaning to Bush's concept of "mandate."
But the GOP always respects a top dog.
The issues surrounding the Gannon/Guckert affair are multiple, and the fact that he spewed homophobic articles by day while getting paid at night for gay sex he advertised on the Internet, in the most graphic of terms, are only, as they say the tip of the iceberg. As we noted in our selection of Howard Kurtz as BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite three weeks ago:
"The Gannon story touches upon everything from manufactured news to manufactured 'reporters' to the Valerie Plame affair to websites that have a connection to the White House, but appear independent, to a Bush Cartel hypocrisy about gays, to payola, to scripted Bush news conferences, to who knows what. This is a BIG media story that should be on the cover of the New York Times and Post."
And Gannon/Guckert, to boot, we have now learned played a key role in being used as a media tool to attack Tom Daschle in his ill-fated Senate re-election bid, as well as raising serious security issues.
After 9/11, how well is the White House protecting us if they allowed a gay Internet hustler, with no previous journalism experience, to daily attend White House press briefings and Presidential news conferences? As Lesley Stahl, former CBS White House correspondent, said on the Bill Maher program, how could the Secret Service and FBI possibly have let this happen?
All good questions, and there are so many more of the non-sexual kind that the mainstream media should be demanding answers to them.
But they aren't.
Instead, they are allowing Karl Rove to spin Gannon/Guckert as a victim who now has become, you got it, a good Christian and changed his evil ways. The "bad bloggers" are keeping him from practicing his profession, Rove would have us believe, although which profession we don't know. We do know he has experience as a gay Internet hooker, but we don't know of any journalism experience beyond being a conduit for White House propaganda. That is the full extent of his reporting "career."
We won't ask who Gannon/Guckert may have been top dogging it with at the White House. Although, that possibility appears worthy of exploration. And sex, as we said, is really just a part of this scandal which would be 24/7 on the cable stations, except that it is a Republican scandal, which means, as in the old Soviet Union, it doesn't really exist, because reporting on it could lose you your job with the corporate executives who don't like Karl Rove calling them up and threatening to take down their media empires.
So for the record, the two leading Internet sites to take on Gannon/Guckert Gate, in the absence of the mainstream media, are both run by openly avowed gays: Americablog.org and Mediamatters.org. John Aravosis and David Brock are hardly guys who go around picking on gays. They are journalists who are furious at the Republican hypocrisy on gay issues: in which a political party stirs up homophobia while protecting gays at the highest level within their own party, including, allegedly, the head of the Republican National Committee. Not to mention the GOP Internet leaker himself, Matt Drudge.
In fact, various gay publications have been outing gay Republicans who spout homophobic positions for sometime now, but the fundamentalist hucksters who support the Bush Cartel don't care because their interest is power. Homophobia is only a means for them to stir up their base. They are more than willing to overlook the plethora of "Top Dog" gays among them. Because, as Jon Stewart said, if you're on top, you're not gay.
The homophobic/gay Republican contradiction is just one of the vast hypocrisies that mark the GOP as a morally bankrupt entity.
The worst reality for America is not that some of the top bulldog Republicans are screwing other gay Bush Republicans; it's that they are screwing democracy.
If the grassroots evangelicals knew about the sexual hijinks at the top of the GOP, there would be a pitchfork rebellion that would unseat the Busheviks and send Karl Rove packing. But the mainstream media is in on the game and knows that you only report Democratic sex scandals. Reporting Republican sex scandals only gets you in trouble with the party that controls all three branches of government.
We might as well have the old Soviet Pravda as our national press outlet. In fact, we do when it comes to a one-party media system in America.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Additional BuzzFlash Note: One, we strongly support the idea of the Rude Pundit that pro-democracy advocates should hold their noses and launch a grassroots campaign by joining Evangelical and Fundamentalist message boards and sending around the photos and story of Gannon/Guckert. Two, in the spirit of disclosure, we should mention that John Aravosis is one of the professional editors who assists with BuzzFlash.com, although his site and his scoops are wholly his own, for which he deserves full credit and our appreciation.