The Funny Farm

Talking To Republics

We have been engaged in a discussion about the JD Guckert affair with one of the members of the right blogsphere. And we'd like to take this opportunity to show you what happens when you try to engage them in open and honest debate - if you don't already know.

To sum up the two positions from which we enter the discussion: we were directed through humorous means (the main way we get to anything these days; it has gotten so sad out there that we have to laugh, otherwise we'll go postal on something) to a post titled Gay-Baiting Continues On the Left in which someone on the right puts forth the thesis that the left is engaging in gay bashing by discussing the fact that a gay hooker was allowed access to White House press briefings on a daily basis for years. Within the post, he states:

How truly pathetic that this is even considered worthy of comment by so many liberals. Apparently, the sexuality of any person with conservative leanings is still "fair game".

and

I have one minor point of disagreement with Andrew and that is, while the left might think they can get away with this sort of smear, they end up driving more and more centrists to vote GOP. Many liberals are becoming the very thing they once claimed to despise.

among other things. But, as far as we can tell, the main thrust of his argument is that those vile liberals are focusing on a minor faux pas in White House security and blowing it all out of proportion. Plus, they're picking on a conservative while they're doing it - a conservative who just happens to be a gay hooker on the side. Those bastiches!

We have declined to comment on the JD Guckert affair within these pages, other than to humorously infer that an old character from a sketch on Saturday Night Live has found new career options with the current administration. Mainly because there are lots of others (besides the pair of eloquent responses linked to here) who make the point much better, and in a much more entertaining way, than we could ever hope to do. And we are in agreement with most of the basic opinions of left blogtopia (y!sctw!) about the JD Guckert affair. Those basic opinions (the axioms from which we base our argument on in this case) are detailed below:

First and foremost, it is amazing to us that a blogger with no journalistic credentials to speak of was given a day pass in to White House press briefings every day for over two years. Said day passes were handed over to Guckert for over a month before he started blogging, and well before he could even be considered to be the shadow of a journalist that he now claims to be. This is a serious abuse of the day pass system, and supposedly a way around serious investigation into the day pass recipient. We don't buy that at all – we're reasonably confident that any sort of pass into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. would require some fairly thorough scrutiny of one's background. So issue number one is how the press pass system was gamed so effectively by Guckert for more than two years. Issue number 1A is how someone who is in effect a nobody in the world of journalism got to do it. Issue number 1B is the laxity of investigative standards by those responsible in this case. And issue number 1C is why this lapse in security was allowed for this lightweight, when responsible journalists were subjected to much closer scrutiny.

Secondly, this individual was allowed to ask very administration-friendly questions during White House press briefings – especially when other questions which had been asked were not ones that the White House wanted to give the answers to. This sort of thing has been perfected to a high art under the Chimperor's reign. To some, it appears that Guckert's only function in those press briefings was to be available to bail out the administration when it found itself backed into a corner. This type of behavior is not helpful in trying to deflect spin emanating from the White House – it actually enhances it. So issue number two is how someone can ask "softball" questions, and nothing but "softball" questions, and be able to keep coming back day after day.

Thirdly, the individual in question operated under an assumed name. Said assumed name was linked to various illicit activities and several questionable web sites which were noted by the left blogsphere with very little effort (after receiving a nasty taunting from Guckert). This would lead some to guesstimate that it was just as easy, if not easier, for government agencies, with their vastly superior resources, to discover the same information. So issue number three is how the White House can either ignore the fact that someone is getting daily passes into the White House while engaging in illegal activities; or, how the White House was unable to determine that this individual was engaging in those illegal activities.

Fourthly, if an obscure individual from the left side of the blogsphere (such as, well, ourselves, let's say) with next to no journalistic experience* got a day pass into the White House press briefings every day for over two years during a Democratic presidency, lobbed softballs to the Democratic press secretary whenever the questioning ventured into perilous territory, and operated a whorehouse on the side**, we would expect that there would be some Democrats as well as some Republics who would be asking some questions about how we got to where we were, and why we weren't being prosecuted for our illicit activities. In this situation, we see no Republics asking any questions – rather, we see them trying to trivialize the discussion, or derail it by bringing accusations of Democrats focusing on the sexuality of the individual in question into the debate so as to paint it as some sort of hypocritical witch hunt against homosexuals. So issue number four is why Republics are not asking to investigate the illegal activities engaged in by Guckert, and why they are projecting their hypocrisy about gays onto their opponents.

So our arguments with regards to JD Guckert's Excellent White House Press Adventure are that, yes, this would be no big deal if it had happened once, but since it happened every day for over two years it's a little more of a dilemma in our eyes. One might almost say it was a deliberate misuse of the White House day pass system by conservatives if one thought that conservatives have been systematically abusing the system ever since they stole the last two presidential elections. It shows that either security is very lax within the White House or security deliberately looked the other way, and did not refuse this clown entry based on their investigations (possibly because they were forced to by a higher authority). It shows that idealogical concerns override security concerns in this badministration. And it shows that, for anything you might say or do, whether it is legal or not, (let's all say it together now), it's okay if you're a Republic. Also, for the record, we would say the same if it were a Democratic shill who gamed the system this way and got away with it. Or if it was a Libertarian, or a Green, or even a Golden Winger with a Debra Winger Cluster and a Neneh Cherry on Top on a Field of Wingnuts, was doing it. The fact that Putsch apologists are so eager to sweep it under the carpet is symptomatic of a general do as we say, not as we do and we can say and do anything we want, but if you try it, we're going to ream you in any and every way we can mentality which we see as being one of the core beliefs of conservatives today.

And our arguments have been twisted, downplayed, ignored, and belittled when we made them to the afore-mentioned conservative. We are very pleased to say that they were civilly and politely twisted, downplayed, ignored, and belittled - because we usually can't say that when we argue about anything with conservatives these days, and it is refreshing to find a conservative who doesn't descend into name-calling and profanity after the first five minutes. But we have been disappointed in the inability to make any headway in the debate, and we suppose that we're going to have to agree to disagree about this.

There are other issues to be discussed here, including the hypocrisy of Republics outing gays who do not share their political point of view while pillorying those who mention that one of their fellow conservatives just happens to be a gay hooker with connections to the White House, the wellspring of information that seems to get to Guckert before it gets to real journalists, and if Guckert is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg, so to speak. But in our opinion, they are secondary issues to the four points enumerated above. And fodder for other, different discussions. But we've gone on far too long in this post already, and we're not going to go into detail about those particular elements today***.

We welcome any rational discussion**** on these issues from anyone within eyeshot of this post.

* - we have had some letters published, we used to write for our university paper about some of the kewl bands we got to see when we were young and foolish, as well as writing some song parodies to amuse and infotain our friends. Thus we would consider our experience to be roughly analogous to Guckert's. Actually we'd consider it to be a bit more than Guckert's, because we actually wrote our own material as opposed to cutting and pasting from Republic policy papers propaganda sheets press releases.

** - only in our fevered dreams have we ever some close to being involved in that sort of endeavor – and then we were strikingly similar in nature to Henry Winkler's character in Night Shift.

*** - and the crowd (cough) screams with enjoyment yet again!

**** - in other words, You suck, you pathetic liberal loser!, or variations thereof, are not going to get any debatable response from Your Humble Narrator. Possibly some ridicule, and maybe a few nasty taunts - depending on our mood at the time.

Posted by (: Tom :) at March 1, 2005 06:57 AM