From the News that Originated in the Blogosphere Dept., No. 49,039.
Today, Frank Rich and MoDo blew the lid off the Jeff Gannon story, a few days after Howie Kurtz wrote on it. You can't make this stuff up. If you hadn't heard about this, click on the Rich link for the synposis.
Of course, for anyone who still follows the liberal blogosphere, this has been an ongoing saga, far and away the single most buzzed-about topic on the Daily Kos, for example. And AmericaBlog appears to be the dumping ground for all Gannon-related info. I hadn't had much interest in this story at first, initially thinking that it's another unwelcome instance of the blogosphere's transformation from news watchdog to a lynch mob looking for reasons to hang idelogically-incorrect journalists. But this guy's news organization isn't even "real": it's a Repug propaganda arm. And this Gannon dude -- nevermind the gay hustler stuff -- was at the White House throwing softballs at the press secretary even before his "news" outfit, Talon News, was even created. Do you suspect that maybe...this guy is a...fake journalist? Oh, this White House would never pay off journalists, would they? Well, yeah. On top of reports that pundit Armstrong Williams got paid hundreds of thousands to shill for No Child Left Behind, this new story shows that this White House has no respect for the boundaries between the press and government. Yet another shining example of the Bushies respect for "freedom".
The word fascism should never be thrown around lightly, but this White House, in their audacious quest to create their own reality, resembles more and more the regimes described by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.
