conservative media elite exposed.
Now that President Mandate is underway in his second term, it's nice to see some of the "real" stories coming to light. Salon.com reported today a very telling story about how GOP cheerleaders are crashing the press room.
In the story, Fake News, Fake Reporter, Salon exposes purported reporter "Jeff Gannon" as nothing more than a Republican plant. Worse yet, he asks questions using false quotes in attempts to trash the Democratic party (as though they need any help looking bad).
"Jeff Gannon" sucks up to Dubya amidsts the liberal, media elite.
From the Salon.com article: Gannon's star turn quickly piqued the interest of many online commentators, who wondered how an obvious Republican operative had been granted access to daily White House press briefings normally reserved for accredited journalists. Two weeks later, a swarming investigation inside the blogosphere into Gannon and Talon News had produced all sorts of damning revelations about how Talon is connected at the hip to a right-wing activist organization called GOPUSA, how its "news" staff consists largely of volunteer Republican activists with no journalism experience, how Gannon often simply rewrote GOP press releases when filing his Talon dispatches.
It also uncovered embarrassing information about Gannon's past as well as his fake identity. When Gannon himself this week confirmed to the Washington Post that his name was a pseudonym, it only added to the sense of a bizarre hoax waiting to be exposed. Read more of the Salon.com article.
This story is simultaneously troubling, ironic, funny, frightening and enraging. I've been saying for years that this administration has veiled ever-so-thinly its relationship with its "grassroots" cheerleaders in the so-called media. If you continue reading the piece about Jeff Gannon, you'll learn he is not a reporter but a true partisan hack worse than the rest of them (Drudge, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.). He's worse because he presents himself as a journalist, yet wears very blatantly his GOP ties on his sleeve.
Look at how much shit has been thrown at journalists in general over the last 15 years or so. "Liberal media elite" is such a locked-and-loaded phrase among Fox News sycophants that it's equal parts stupid and annoying (not to mention utterly baseless). And here we've got a party operative who sneaks in under a fake name and as much journalistic cred as a cub reporter for the community college newspaper.
What's scary is this has ties higher up the food chain. No, not directly to Dubya; but his people (who answer to Godfather Rove) orchestrated the move to further lie to the rest of the country and world in attempts to sell Bush's election victory as a "mandate."
There's something scary going on in politics when a marginal, bumbling oaf of a president is able to bask in such an enormous amount of glory.
I'm not sure which concerns me more, the dog or the tail that's wagging the dog. Either way, the moral of the story is this: don't take your eyes off these fuckers for one minute. And by "these fuckers," I mean the uber-righties who are ceasing the airwaves.
In the story, Fake News, Fake Reporter, Salon exposes purported reporter "Jeff Gannon" as nothing more than a Republican plant. Worse yet, he asks questions using false quotes in attempts to trash the Democratic party (as though they need any help looking bad).
"Jeff Gannon" sucks up to Dubya amidsts the liberal, media elite.
From the Salon.com article: Gannon's star turn quickly piqued the interest of many online commentators, who wondered how an obvious Republican operative had been granted access to daily White House press briefings normally reserved for accredited journalists. Two weeks later, a swarming investigation inside the blogosphere into Gannon and Talon News had produced all sorts of damning revelations about how Talon is connected at the hip to a right-wing activist organization called GOPUSA, how its "news" staff consists largely of volunteer Republican activists with no journalism experience, how Gannon often simply rewrote GOP press releases when filing his Talon dispatches.
It also uncovered embarrassing information about Gannon's past as well as his fake identity. When Gannon himself this week confirmed to the Washington Post that his name was a pseudonym, it only added to the sense of a bizarre hoax waiting to be exposed. Read more of the Salon.com article.
This story is simultaneously troubling, ironic, funny, frightening and enraging. I've been saying for years that this administration has veiled ever-so-thinly its relationship with its "grassroots" cheerleaders in the so-called media. If you continue reading the piece about Jeff Gannon, you'll learn he is not a reporter but a true partisan hack worse than the rest of them (Drudge, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.). He's worse because he presents himself as a journalist, yet wears very blatantly his GOP ties on his sleeve.
Look at how much shit has been thrown at journalists in general over the last 15 years or so. "Liberal media elite" is such a locked-and-loaded phrase among Fox News sycophants that it's equal parts stupid and annoying (not to mention utterly baseless). And here we've got a party operative who sneaks in under a fake name and as much journalistic cred as a cub reporter for the community college newspaper.
What's scary is this has ties higher up the food chain. No, not directly to Dubya; but his people (who answer to Godfather Rove) orchestrated the move to further lie to the rest of the country and world in attempts to sell Bush's election victory as a "mandate."
There's something scary going on in politics when a marginal, bumbling oaf of a president is able to bask in such an enormous amount of glory.
I'm not sure which concerns me more, the dog or the tail that's wagging the dog. Either way, the moral of the story is this: don't take your eyes off these fuckers for one minute. And by "these fuckers," I mean the uber-righties who are ceasing the airwaves.
