I Hate It Here
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Rumours of my death have been vastly exaggerated. Rumours of my being found inebriated in an alley dazedly clutching several violated, shocked puppies and a fifth of Jack Daniels are not true. Loyal readers would know how I feel about puppies in general, and understand that I would never be foolish enough to leave witnesses to such tomfoolery. In any case, Jack Daniels is pisswater drunk only by the lechers of the rural regions who wish to think they are preserving a culture which in fact is worthy only of the shotgun shells it dumps in unbiodegradable turdpiles wherever there's enough squirrels to provide fun or dinner.
That said, let's talk about my favorite subject, the Smirker and his band of cronies, as well as their wonderful relationships with those who would be my colleagues were I not such a solo revolting shit. It's been a bad year for this linchpin of American Democracy. Let's start with (I can't say 'first' because the list of assrapings that this weaseljerker and his tops have been pulling off is too long and convoluted) the revelations that the White House has been paying "journalists" to promote bits of the Old Scum ideology without (crucial point) divulging their connection to the Administration. Whoops. I'd say this makes the Administration look bad, but that's really a non-starter; when you're looking at a group of leering incontinent ass-monkeys frantically cleaning each others' slimed backsides while circlejerking and making bets on how much of the American Public they can spray on, it's a tad hard to say how something makes them 'look bad.'
After the first incident, the Smirker's people come forward and dissemble and deny as usual, stating their commitment to 'values' and swearing that their White House would never do such a thing. Again. Certainly.
So, naturally, two more incidents surface, with the so-called journos admitting the payola in public.
What happens? Not a thing, really. Why? Why is that? Have you people lost your faith not only in the press but in the notion even that things can be fixed? Have your representatives so lost their fear of phone calls and polling that they don't even bother to go through the motions? It's possible. Much is possible. A few pro forma protests happen, mostly from now-impotent Dems who can safely posture for constituents without risking action, because of their new minority.
Then recently, we're hit with round two. Jeff Gannon, a turdclown from some outfit he calls Talon News who is notable for throwing lifelines to the wonderfully incompetent weasel and apologist Scott McClellan and the Smirker himself during White House press briefings (sample quote: "How would you respond to these Democrats who are so obviously divorced from reality?") finally attracts some journalistic attention. Not from the professional journalists, oh no, that would be too much to ask. Too afraid of risking their access, their paychecks, their precious 'sources,' their ability to come sit in a room and have their ears stuffed with rank foulness on a daily basis by these fools - no, by citizens. On them thar intarweb things.
Turns out Mr. Gannon, who has been getting Press access to the briefing room and access to the President's rare news briefings, has been using a fake name. In fact, Talon News is a thinly disguised front organization for a few GOP activists, and Mr 'Gannon's credentials consist of a $50 shitrag garnered from a two-day seminar from some unaccredited org that meets in hotel ballrooms. Better yet, despite his staunch claim that he hates them thar liberals, and is a good, Christian, gun-ownin' truck drivin' White male Repub voter, he also seems to own domain names with titles like, hm, hotmilitarystuds.com, militaryescortsm4m.com, and the like. Plus on what appears to be his old AOL homepage, there are topless pics of the boy wearing dogtags and a milspec buzzcut, trolling for ass no less than that tired old tramp you drove past in front of the Dairy Mart last night with the thong pulled up under her belly overhang.
So, James Guckert...er, excuse me, 'Jeff Gannon', seems to have been highly interested in 'm4m' military escorting. Enough to buy domain names. Or at least, interested enough to try to bait liberals into think he was. In any case, that domain, and the corporate domain that owns Talon News, are both registered to him. Note: If he was, in fact, truly interested in m4m military escorting, I'd be much more tempted to support him. As my much-more-respectable colleage Wonkette says enthusiastically, "this town could use some more assfucking, yes it could." Who gives a flying fuck how he gets his jollies? I myself find a good bit of safely-done sport with young fresh fellows quite relaxing, if done with legally-aged courtesans who've had their medical checks; just as I see only goodness in dallying with comely wenches who seek my JOURNALISTIC WISDOM. No; the point is the hypocrisy, given that this is coming from the party which seems to have made it its mission in life to stamp out any such attempts by safety-minded funseeking adults to have and make whoopie by their own damn selves.
So, Mr. McClellan, the press asks, finally awakening to the fact that the American Public is starting to do its job for it and it might be rendered irrelevant enough to worry for its meager paycheck, can you tell us how someone with a fake name can be getting daily access to you and the press room, and credentials? We're sure, says at least one journo, we saw him with 'hard' - i.e. permanent - creds at least once, anyway. Plus, you call on him all the time, teach.
Assclown McClellan: Uh, I dunno who he is. He just showed up. I don't have anything to do with who gets into the room. It's not my job. I'm not a press critic.
...
We'll just leave that winner as it stands, really, the Press Secretary saying it's not his job to determine who gets into the room and that he's not a press critic. The Congressional Press Office, we find out now, rejected Gannon/Guckert's request for access after even a cursory examination of his so-called creds - not even because of the alias thing, but because they felt that the limited access they had to offer should go to news reporters who, you know, had some experience and portfolio at doing their job. Scott, how is the Congressional Press Office's job that different from yours, really? Other than the subject matter you're controlling access to?
Enough on that. Let's let it fester in the sun, like ripe puppy entrails steeping in bourbon. Pull it into a voodoo pattern and watch the Smirker blink quickly in the glaring battery lights of the minicams as his small monkey brain panics without handholders to speak to him from On High over his nonexistent earpiece - the one, it seems to turn out now, that the New York Times, once bastion of our Right To Know, decided to spike a story on a couple of days before the election because it 'wasn't their place to run stories to influence the election.'
Fucking excuse me?
According to research done by FAIR, Times reporters had backchecked a large amount of the theorizing and analysis being done on the web at the time regarding the Smirker's mysterious 'bulge' (no, not that one, that's for his veep to pack) - to the point of not only talking to the professional NASA photographic analyst who examined the pictures taken by FOX News during the debate, but also checking on said scientist's credentials by speaking to his peers. They had consulted with experts in the field of prompter mechanisms, body armor, and tailoring (all various explanations offered by the Smirker and cadre at various times for the bulge before they got their story straight). The reporters felt they had a good solid piece explaining that yes, the President, Mr. Values and Honesty, had in fact cheated during the Presidential debate.
The fact that he cheated or was controlled and still managed only to eke out what even his supporters could only spin to be a weak draw should tell you something, by the way.
In any case, the Times, at that point, fell down on their job. They failed you, they failed me, they failed the system, and they failed their colleagues. They decided at an editorial level or higher that this story 'wasn't appropriate.' Note: There wasn't a question about the story's accuracy. This was due no doubt not only to the backchecking procedure, but also to the degree of distancing being done in the piece. The story was all over the nets, as well as in lesser print publications by that time; what was news at that point was the professional photo analysis (done by a government scientist hired for his training and experience in just that area) coupled with expert opinion from those whose jobs involved that form of technology, and their willingness to go on the record for a publication of the Times' stature.
But the Times spiked it.
At that point, the fuckery of the system closed in.
So now, we have active payola for content. We have willful suppression of damaging content, with or without active interference from the WH. We have the placement of blatant shills, with questionable backgrounds, inside the Press Corps with the job of not only asking softball questions (cribbed from GOP fact sheets in many cases, by the way) but of therefore using up access otherwise available to actual newspeople trying to perform their democratic task of holding the policymakers' feet to an ever-weakening fire. We have the Smirker himself likely cheating his ass off on national television, exposed only because his own favorite network disregarded a Secret Service order not to place cameras at that angle during the appearance.
Just for icing on the cake, it turns out Gannon/Guckert was one of the first, if not the first, 'press' to refer to the leaked CIA memo in the Valerie Plame affair - which has landed him on the subpoena list. How did he get this memo? Especially him? He referred to it before Novak did. It's one thing to say that a 'whistleblower' gave Novak, who (whatever else he is in his private time where he might, for all we know, fist small forest creatures without benefit of lubrication) is a well-known figure, such a document. However, who in the holy fuck is Gannon, especially then? He was only notable for being a nobody with a fake name who claimed he had 'daily meetings' privately with Scott McClellan.
Daily meetings, huh?
This stinks so badly, people, that if you can't smell it, you must work shoveling sickened elephant diarrhea for a living. Not that that's bad, someone has to do it - look what people like me do for a living - but it sure must deaden the nose.
We can argue the incompetence or duplicity or sheer downright arrogance and fuckwittery of the Smirker and Crew another time. Now, however, I wanted to focus on one thing - their ongoing and deliberate attempts to sabotage one of the traditional American defenses against their kind - the examination and dissemination of information by a free and uncontrolled press. Note I do not say 'unbiased' - Biased is fine, so long as it's made clear. Uncontrolled. Had Talon News and 'Gannon' simply said 'Hi, we're paid for by the GOP' then much of this criticism would be moot.
But they didn't. They relied on you being too stupid and lazy to figure it out.
Some of you werent.
The rest of you are why I hate it here.
-Spider Jerusalem