Revisionist Gannon

Lindsay Beyerstein writes a post about the conservative practice of scalping. I agree with her that the lefty blogosphere is much better at political activism. Conservatives consider political activism taking down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan.

I had a problem with this paragraph in her post.

I've heard Gannon/Guckert expose incorrectly cited as a left-wing scalp job. That wasn't a scalping. John Aravosis exposed a mole in the White House press corps. The mole lost his job when it was revealed that he was there illicitly.

There is another aspect about the Gannon/Gurkert flap that bothered me with Joseph Hovsep's comment.

I left this comment to address Lindsay and Hovsep's argument.

But I think the Gannon/Guckert scandal is a scalping. The focus was constantly on his sex work, constantly splashing his escort ad photos everywhere, especially Aravosis. The mole aspect was secondary.

Several Daily Kos bloggers and my friend Ron Brynaert found several cases of plagiarism on Gannon and Talon News' links to GOPUSA.com. The sex stuff came later. Gannon would have disappeared for the same reasons as Ben Domenech. Talon News wasn't really a news site. Ron also caught instances of plaguirism with Robert Eberle.

I make a friendly disagreement with Lindsay over John Aravosis breaking the story. Someone leaked him pornagraphic pictures of James Gurkert. Many other bloggers did the leg work of spending hours researching GOPUSA.com and finding the plaguirism. The pictures (while sensationalistic) has nothing to do with Talon News and GOPUSA.com.

What does this picture prove?



The photo doesn't prove Gannon worked with a GOP outfit or was a plagiarist. James Gurkert did lie about his background. Which would explain the Jeff Gannon identity. He was no less a GOP shrill than Robert Eberle. People always latch onto the sex aspect of any scandal. Gannon was taking heat for his blatantly politically bias questions and ripping off wire news service stories before the infamous photos came out. John Aravosis did not break those stories. It is revisionist history to say he did.

Over to you Ron.

Side note: I like Lindsay and appreciate the support she has given this site. I also have nothing against John Aravosis.

Update: Lindsay updated her post and gave credit to other bloggers for the Gannon story. Good for her.