Meet the New Jeff Gannon, Same As the Old Jeff Gannon: Disgraced Republican Activist, Selling Scandal By the Pound, Continues to Embarrass White House

By ADVOCATE STAFF

We report, you decide.

Decide what you think of former Administration-sanctioned White House "news" correspondent Jeff Gannon saying that New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd "probably needs a bit of the old Jeff Gannon to relieve some of that pent up whatever."

In 2002, Gannon accused Dowd of being "jealous" of President Bush's physique.

More recently, Gannon has alluded (twice) on his blog to his entirely unsubstantiated belief that Dowd is an alcoholic.

This is in contrast to The Advocate's entirely well-founded belief that Gannon is, literally, a whore.

[Then again, that's probably just because there's pictorial evidence for the proposition].

Gannon has also bragged, on the radical conservative web forum Free Republic, that he is a "loose cannon."

He also likes guns.

Yet he received Secret Service clearance to enter the White House every single day for more than two years, even when he wasn't working for any recognized news organization.

We report, you decide.

The White House, for its part, has already decided: the print media must die, direct marketing (see: propaganda) is the new order of the day.

Read about this new Republican meme, now being rolled out by the Bush Administration, here.

And prepare to be chilled to the bone.

The one presidential administration you don't want "talking directly" to you (to the exclusion of all other forms of hearing from them) is a presidential administration which has been caught in more lies than any other since, well, Reagan's.

What the country needs now is articulate, shrewd, energetic folks--in the New Media and the Old Media--with the time and the energy to help citizens make informed decisions about the actions of their government. A lie you hear directly isn't any more valuable to you and your family than a lie you hear indirectly; the purpose of the so-called Fourth Estate is to be our watchdog, largely because most of us have day jobs and don't have the time or inclination to investigate each and every bullshit claim, or allusion, or analogy, or "study," or budget, or justification for an illegal war this runaway Administration offers up for public consumption.

And this Administration is a cut below the local snake-oil salesman.

Things are getting bad, folks.

Real bad.

We live in a time in which Jeff Gannon can say to the blog Lifelike Pundit, without a hint of irony, that "Gannongate is another skirmish in the ongoing battle for a truly free press."

Well, God bless us, it looks like Orwell was 21 years too early.

War is Peace.

Chaos is Order.

And Jeff Gannon is just another New Media do-gooder.

As he recently told the blog Media Bistro, "[Gannongate] has given journalism a wake-up call that it needs to look at the new media. The online journalists are doing the work that the mainstream media used to do. These online guys are doing good stuff."

Good God, what kind of political, social, and cultural climate is it in which the inmate makes more sense than the staff at the asylum?

And are there any staff left at the asylum at all?

Or can the madmen just gibber "directly" to the wall?

Why else would the Bush Administration give a national platform (at the White House, no less, and as an alleged member of the journalistic establishment, no less) to a man who, on June 27th, 2002, snarled on his blog,

Daschle and the Democratic members on the Senate judiciary committee must be challenged and if necessary, and it will be necessary, voted out.

Bush-sanctioned White House activist or Bush-sanctioned White House "journalist"?

We report, you decide.