Imagine if you will, Bill Clinton's White House has let a slightly chubby prostitute with big hair, no journalism background, and no legitimate news outlet into the press room for two years. During that time she lobs softballs at the press secretary on a daily basis. When she gets an opportunity to ask Slick Willy a question, she accuses the Republicans of being divorced from reality.
When her prostitute and tax cheat status is revealed by Matt Drudge, the echo chamber goes into hyper drive. The National Review prints piece after piece screaming that the President is once again bringing shame to the Oval Office. Due to the attention, the corporate media picks up the scandal, not making accusations, mind you, but just asking questions and demanding answers. The story eventually fades or is blown into a real scandal. Either way, damage is done in the heartland. Democrats are the party of loose morals.
So what do we get from The Nation when this circumstance falls into our laps?...
I doubt the White House press operation saw Gannon/Guckert as a lifeline for either McClellan or Bush. If he received preferential treatment from the White House, my hunch is that he did so due to sloppiness on the part of the press office or because he was viewed as simpatico.
We have the White House allowing two years of close access, including Presidential parties, to a known prostitute and David Corn says it was just slopiness. (I say "known", because there is no way a background check didn't pull most of this up.)
Corn starts out by trying to innoculate himself from criticism by letting us know that he's a blogger too... so please don't hurt him. (even thouth he's hurting us)
(Bloggers, don't jump on me. I blog too. Click here. I'm only wondering, not accusing.)
He then wonders the scandal into "just a glitch in the system". Nothing to see here, just the Bush Administration consorting with prostitutes to bring you family values propaganda, move along.
Even if it is a glitch, which I assure you it is not, this story does damage to Bush and should not be dismissed by what is supposed to be our sympathetic press. At the very least Corn could have ignored the story.
How the hell are we supposed to expose the unbelievable hypocracy of "conservatives" and this administration if The Nation continues to undermine any left-wing movement, no matter how effective, that is viewed to be unseemly or rabble-rousing?
David Corn should have been wondering about the links between Guckert and the White House, not whether this story is beneath the white-wine-and-cheese ideals of his "left."