Guckert, homophobia, and sexism

Allan Hazlett of Fake Barn Country argues that liberals who exult in the downfall of Jim Guckert are being either being homophobic or wrongfully exploiting the homophobia of American culture.

That is to say, that while Guckert certainly did something wrong by using a fake name to get into the White House, he didn't get in trouble for that - he got in trouble for being gay and/or posing nude on the web and/or being or trying to be an escort. (Rich goes on to note that what is disturbing about this affair is not anything about Guckert, it's that there's "soft" and "loaded" questions being asked all the time at White House press conferences, by "reporters" that are nothing but lapdogs for the administration.)

This would not be a huge deal with this if it were just Guckert getting forced to resign by his homophobic bosses at Talon News - we knew they were homophobic, that's their bag, screw them. It's that Guckert got forced to resign by his homophobic bosses, and (it appears) some "liberals" (I still have Dowd in mind here) are reveling in it, enjoying watching a man lose his job and have his life destroyed because of his sexual life. Never mind that he was an asshole, a conservative reporter, who scammed his way into the White House - why mention the sex if that's not what we're offended by? [Emphasis added.]

I will argue that Guckert's career as a Washington escort is highly germane to the present scandal.

Guckert isn't a victim of homophobia but he is a beneficiary of sexism. Suppose a female prostitute were discovered in the White House press corps. Suppose, like Guckert, she had no qualifications whatsoever and seemed to be operating in a inexplicable bureaucratic limbo--hard pass privileges on an indefinitely renewed soft pass. Suppose she seemed to have had even more access than most of the hard pass press.

The first thing every would wonder would be "Who got her this job? Who is she fucking/blackmailing?" People would ask that even if this totally unqualified "reporter" weren't a prostitute. This is a reasonable question that any rational adult would ask. It's hard to see how else someone with so many liabilities could coast for so long. Maybe Guckert is the beneficiary of GOPUSA's nepotism rather than the White House's. But if that's true, why did the White House assiduously ignore the huge liabilities of Talon's mole?

Guckert is an anomaly that we are trying to explain. How did this guy get into the press corps? Guckert's journalistic qualifications don't explain his meteoric rise to the pinnacle of American political journalism. At best he got in because of his ideological credentials and his obsequious behavior. But it is absurd to think that Guckert's ruse could have gone unnoticed for two years with even minimal due diligence.

The most parsimonious explanation is that Guckert has a very special relationship with someone very important. Maybe he has a platonic tie to an insider--he could be family, a friend, a big time Republican donor, etc. But as a Washington escort, Guckert had an entree into the halls of power. His career no doubt made him privy to a lot of embarrassing information, the sort of thing that might be fodder for blackmail.

A hint of nepotism and/or blackmail in the White House is an issue of serious concern to the public. It's bad enough that the White House tolerated an ideological mole in the press corps. It would be much worse if that mole were a serious security risk. If Jim Guckert were having an affair with a White House insider, that liason would be a magnet for blackmail. Both the insider and Guckert would be vulnerable.

As a Washington escort, Guckert would have learned a great deal of "sensitive" information about powerful people. Perhaps someone was was encouraging him to be discreet by offering him a job.

Comments

[Josh Narins]

Reversing the gender hadn't crossed my mind. It clarifies things immensely. Thanks.

[Jacobo]

The blackmail/security issue is certainly rational, but how many in the media are sticking to the rational argument? When given the choice between rational and sensational, we know which aspect wins...see, e.g., the continuing missing FL girl story, while ~9,000 people worldwide will die today from malaria, with no mention.

Rational, smational.

[Thad]

Bill Berkowitz has a great piece in Working for Change on the religious right's silence on this issue, including a great quote from John Aravosis of AMERICAblog:

"Do [I] think the religious right would care if Bill Clinton welcomed a gay hooker to the White House, and then slipped him classified intelligence information? Let me think about that one."

[Sajah]

OK, so the public policy issue here is...what? His hypocrisy? No, hypocrisy is fun to point out but has no real consequences beyond that of an individual peccadillo.

The public policy issue here is whether he was blackmailing someone in the White House (good hunch) and whether that is related at all to Plamegate. All this needs to be investigated.

[With NEW Washday Goodness!]

There are at least three "someones," at least one of them a White House power, who may have been exposed to blackmail through the activites of Guckert as pross and "Gannon" as press.

Someone in the Secret Service or the FBI must have done a security check. Someone in the White House must have approved the never-ending series of WH press room day passes. Does anyone contend that either of those things didn't happen? Therefore those two someones must have discussed Guckert's initial request for a day pass.

Is it at all believable that the security check did not find:
(a) that Guckert had no background as a reporter,
(b) that Guckert worked for no known news agency (for GOPUSA, prior to the creation of Talon News) or later for a newly-created news agency (TN -- none of whose employees or volunteers had any significant background in news) with at best a very iffy claim to be a news agency at all, and
(c) that Guckert's E-mail address and chosen pseudonym "Jeff Gannon" both led to web pages where "Jeff" had pornographic photos, identifiably of himself, where he offered himself as a $200/hr prostitute, and where he reproduced testimonials from satisfied johns?

Is it at all believable that a WH staffer, learning this and knowing or finding that prostitution is a felony in DC, would decide unilaterally to give Guckert a day-pass anyway?

It seems more likely that the people in charge of doing security checks and issuing passes either denied the request out of hand or kicked it upstairs. Indeed, it seems impossible that they did not. And either way, somewhere in the WH senior powers-that-be there was a Mister Upstairs who told them to sit down, shut up, and give Guckert access to the WH press room and ultimately to the President.

Once that had happened, everyone involved -- very much including Mister Upstairs -- could be targets for a blackmailer. I would think that a Mister Upstairs powerful enough to say "Damn the 8-inch torpedoes, full speed ahead with the press pass!" might be a security risk through his access to upper level WH officials -- because how can he not have been one of them himself?

The circle of vulnerability grew each time any of the original conspirators told anyone else -- which they must have done. In Washington, I gather, CYA is raised to the stature of a fine art.

None of this has anything to do either with Guckert being a man or apparently being gay or with the fact that his johns also are men and apparently gay. It has to do with prostitution, a cover-up, and bringing in a friendly ringer to pretend to be a WH reporter.

[Thad]

No, hypocrisy is fun to point out but has no real consequences beyond that of an individual peccadillo.

Strongly disagree. The Republican party is actively engaged in gay-baiting as electioneering. This is obvious -- the USANext ad is only the latest instantiation of that. They may have won the damn election on gay-baiting.

Now it turns out that a senior administration official may well have been handing out special favors -- including not just a "temporary" press pass that was renewed every day for over two years, and not just a background check waiver, but also leaking classified information -- to a gay prostitute posing as a reporter. In other words, at the same time Mr. Senior Administration Official was pushing anti-gay ballot initiatives and running anti-gay campaign ads and working with anti-gay fundamentalist groups, he was also fucking a male prostitute and pulling strings to help advance his "career" as a reporter.

It's not about the whore, it's about his john.

If there's been a clearer instance of IOKIYAR (It's OK If You're A Republican) in the entire history of the world, then I wanna know about it.