'Conservative' White House accredited reporter outed as gay escort
Jeff Gannon was a little known conservative reporter until he was exposed by political blog sites for being a gay escort earlier in the month. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, attracted the attention on online political commentators and media watchdog groups after President George Bush bypassed dozens of eager reporters from nationally and internationally recognised news outlets and selected Guckert to pose a question at his first post-inauguration news conference on Jan 26 news conference which was telecast on TV. He asked: "Mr. President, how can you work with Democrats who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"
Suspicious of how Guckert who had no journalism experience whatsoever had been granted access to daily White House press briefings normally reserved for accredited journalists, and the little-known Republican-friendly organisation he worked for on a voluntary basis at the time, called Talon News, an investigation inside the blogosphere into Gannon and Talon News ensued. Critics revealed how Talon is connected to a right-wing activist organisation called GOPUSA and how Guckert often simply rewrote GOP press releases for his news site. When Gannon himself later confirmed to the Washington Post that his name was a pseudonym, critics dug deeper into his past and found Internet sites that featured nude photos of Guckert and advertised male escort services for US$200 an hour.
AMERICAblog ( americablog.blogspot.com) linked its readers to the photos and escort Web sites after Guckert denied to CNN that the sites were ever active. The anti-gay conservative is said to also own the domain names Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com and Militaryescortsm4m.com as AMERICAblog also posted copies of invoices of payments to a California web site designer to set up the web sites.
The White House has been called to explain how can a reporter using a fake name and working for a fake news organisation was granted press credentials. In December 2003, Guckert's application for a similar press pass to cover Capitol Hill was denied because Talon, a web site operated by Texas Republican Robert Eberle, was not deemed to be a legitimate, independent news outlet. Media watchers demand to know why the White House press office allowed Guckert to circumvent the hard pass system by using a day pass - designed for out-of-town reporters - whenever he needed White House access for nearly two years.
Democrats Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) requested from the White House all documents related to Guckert's press passes while Rep. Louise Slaughter (-N.Y.) filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Homeland Security, in search of all information related to Guckert's credentials and security clearance to cover the White House.
Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, reported that Guckert is a graduate of Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism - a two-day, US$50 seminar run by Morton Blackwell, a longtime Republican activist who co-founded the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Despite being covered widely by independent news sites and journals for two weeks, the story has largely been ignored by major news outlets.
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Bangkok police arrest 31 for drug possession at party
Police arrested 29 men and two women for possession of drugs at a raid on a party in Bangkok's Yan Nawa district on early Sunday morning.
The Thai Nation newspaper reported that the police raided a room at the PST Condominium, belonging to an Alfred Lin, 35, at 5am following a complaint about the noise.
Lt-Colonel Kittipong Suwan of Bang Phong Phang police said they found six ecstasy tablets, two small bags of cocaine and two bottles of the ketamine on the floor but nobody admitted ownership. He also described the suspects as "fun-loving educated people."
All present, including five foreigners, were charged with illegal possession of drugs and taken for urine testing. The foreigners were from Singapore, Malaysia, Italy, Finland and France.
Simpson's sister comes out; anti-gay religious group outs Shrek 2
The Simpsons has ended months of speculation by revealing the identity of its gay character - Marge's sister Patty Bouvier although the outing of the character, who is noted to fancy lumberjack shirts and golf, didn't shock fans.
It also featured character Homer Simpson performed dozens of same-sex marriages after becoming a minister by registering online.
Meanwhile, Shrek 2 has become the latest animated film to be "outed" by Christian fundamentalists in the US. The Dreamworks feature, which had become recently available on DVD, is accused by the Traditional Values Coalition for containing "subtle sexual messages."
The coalition, which describes itself as a grassroots inter-denominational lobby with more than 43,000 member churches warned parents to consider the animated film's "cross-dressing and transgender themes" before allowing their children to see it.
The article described one of the characters, an "evil'' bartender (voiced by Larry King) who is a male-to-female transgender in transition and who expresses a sexual desire for Prince Charming. It also identified another scene where Shrek and Donkey need rescuing from a dungeon by Pinocchio and his nose, which is made to extend as an escape bridge by getting the wooden boy to lie about not wearing women's underwear.
Christian activists, such as Focus on the Family, recently targeted SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street's Bert & Ernie as children's characters who are conduits for a pro-gay message. In 1999, Rev Jerry Falwell described purse-toting Teletubby, Tinky Winky, as a gay role model.
The next "pro-gay" cartoon to be outed might just perhaps be DreamWorks' Shark Tale, in which a shark mafioso, voiced by Robert DeNiro, must come to terms with the fact he has a vegetarian son who likes to dress up as a dolphin.
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