Tom Maguire has even more on the Gannon deal. He also notes how the New Yorker is calling it "nothinggate." More:
...the hapless Dems can not find enough help at the WaPo, the Times, CBS, ABC, and NBC to drive one story about one phony reporter? Pathetic. And even the New Yorker is calling it "Nothinggate". Humiliating.
Well, Sen. Durbin is no quitter! No whining and excuse-making for him - he is busily writing a letter and doing wind sprints, trying to chase down his Senate colleagues who, we imagine, are fleeing before his wrath as though he were a Fox interviewer.
Later, Sen. Durbin may prepare a letter describing an actual crime for Bush and the Justice Dept. to investigate. Or not.
Also, a guy who worked for Howard Dean's Presidential campaign and for Eric Alterman's liberal outfit has put together a review of the last Senate race and the role of blogs. It's not very well argued, suffers from errors, and certainly has a left Alternman-esque perspective, but note this interesting excerpt when thinking about the "objectivity" of Talon News:
Was the Argus biased in its coverage of Tom Daschle? A bit. And the paper ought have disclosed that Kranz had old ties to Daschle to avoid at least the appearance of collusion between the two.
A rather big admission for an Alterman ally. Also, although I'm certainly not a fan of her tone generally, Ann Coulter makes some interesting points in this article about the Gannon deal:
The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a website where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis? Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.
No offense to Talon News or anything, but, as Coulter snidely notes, the thought that they were a very big deal in the SD Senate race is overblown. Here are the 26 factors that lots of important/smart people agreed were decisive/influential in the race. Talon News isn't among them. The basic problem Daschle had was leading a Deaniac-energized Party while running in a red state. Remember that the final exit poll showed 16% of South Dakotans considered themselves "liberal" while 40% considered themselves "conservative." That was tough territory for Daschle. More Coulter:
Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.
She also notes invented names for Larry King, Michael Savage, Geraldo etc... Lastly, here's a post from some outfit who talked to Daschle's former campaign spokesman, who said he was sending a photo of Gannon to members of the press a long time ago:
In fact, said Pfeiffer, in the summer of 2003 there was "not a single minute" the campaign thought Gannon was a real journalist. Nor did the campaign keep this information to themselves. According to Pfeiffer, the campaign sent Gannon's website address and news of his attempted deceit of the Daschle camp to several reporters.
How startlingly mean of them. It seems that the saints from the Daschle made a "negative attack!" Finally, the reporter who told me that the Daschle campaign sent him/her a Gannon photo said he couldn't verify it was meant to "discredit" him. Well, ok. I guess it was meant to boost his credibility.
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