The Bush administration has not yet responded to the requests of Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. John Conyers for information concerning Jeff Gannon (aka Guckert). So, today Slaughter appealed to the American people to help her. Here’s a clip:

It has been well over a week since I wrote President Bush seeking answers in this matter. I have not yet received a reply. Along with Rep. John Conyers, I have also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all DHS records regarding Mr. Guckert’s admittance into the White House. With each new revelation it becomes more and more clear that the relationship between the White House and Jeff Gannon was anything but typical.

It is time for this Administration to stop the stonewalling and come clean with the American people.

I have worked on media fairness and reform throughout my stay in the House, and never have I seen such an open assault on the standards of a free press as I have in the past four years. We have seen several right wing pundits who were being paid with tax dollars to promote Administration policies with no disclosure. We have seen fake news reports distributed to media outlets with no indication of their origin; we have seen those fake segments deemed “illegal covert propaganda” by the General Accounting Office; and then we have seen the White House simply continue on with the technique completely unphased. We now know that prior to the war in Iraq, Iraqi exiles with checkered pasts, allied with (and paid by) the White House distributed bogus intelligence on WMD to produce perhaps more than 100 newspaper articles hyping the case for war! Even now President Bush flies around the country at taxpayer expense holding televised “town hall discussions” on Social Security in which nobody who does not support him is allowed in.

This must stop, and it must stop now. This sort of manipulation of the free press – one of most pivotal checks & balances in our Constitution – demonstrates a contempt for democracy, the rule of law, and the great people of this nation, many of whom trust this president with all their hearts.

I ask you to stand with me – and the DCCC – in demanding an end to the propaganda.

Please sign our petition.

Don’t think about the Neocon “enemies list” that your name will get added to — just sign it.

Our favorite fake reporter, Jeff Gannon, in one of his “news” columns last year, said that John Kerry, were he elected, might someday be known as our “first gay president.” His saying this was completely in keeping with the strategy of the Bush campaign, which took full advantage of the raging gay marriage debate to mobilize their backward Bible-thumping base… Democrats, it was clear, loved sodomy. Democrats, if they had their way, we could be certain would use the public schools to turn us all gay. Bush, however, like an emissary from God, was here to defend us though. He’d “protect” marriage against the tireless assault of those militant queers who want to do disgusting things like grow old together in peace.

This doesn’t surprise me. It’s politically expedient to push hot buttons like these and to motivate people at the cores of their reptilian brains. “The other guy wants to make your son gay. I’m here to defend your family.” That’s pretty persuasive stuff. I can see how someone like Jeff Gannon would take the easy shot against Kerry. It’s hard to pass something like that up.

In the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” Tom Frank suggests that there are two types of Republican leaders, the ones that work their way up through the party system, and the ones who, sensing a groundswell, use a social movement to carry them along. His book is full of examples of this – ambitious men and women latching onto evangelical themes and catapulting themselves farther ahead into the political universe. With that in mind, I would suggest that several leading Republicans have nothing against homosexuals. No, they’re just using them to whip up the masses and further their own agendas. That, I think, explains how someone like Jeff Gannon could on one hand casually smear John Kerry while on the other partaking in hot man-on-man action. (Man sex, I would imagine, has to be so much hotter after a day of stirring up anti-gay hatred.)

As for Gannon, the trolls in the comments section of this site have suggested that I’m only covering this story because of the fact that it’s recently come to light that he was, before he turned to fake journalism, a male prostitute. I suppose the argument is that I wouldn’t have cared if there was a fake journalist in the White House press room lobbing softballs at the president and his press secretary if not for the fact that he was buggering men for cash. (It also ignores the fact that I was writing about Gannon a week before the sex-for-hire stuff came out.) While it does strike me as quite funny, and appropriate, that this man worked as a male prostitute before doing the work of the administration, I don’t think I’d be any less interested in the story if the man was as asexual as, say, Condoleeza Rice.

On a somewhat related note, the ACLU has just announced their 2005 Work Plan. If you get a chance, and if you’re interested in things like the separation of church and state, free speech, individual rights, and reproductive freedom, check it out and consider joining. We could use you… or at least your money.