Bruce Bannor
Remember the thing last year or whenever it was with the right-wing reporter/gay male prostitute named Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. James Guckert) who had managed to get into the White House press briefings? Remember how the very idea just shocked —shocked— the sensibilities of [real reporters]? Remember how Gannon’s homosexual identity wasn’t abused by liberals just because it pointed up the hypocrisy of the Right?
Well, over at Eschaton —where Duncan Black just banned me a while ago— one of the day’s topics is the news of some upcoming panel discussion for gay journalists from which a couple of his buddies have very dramatically withdrawn on account of the conditions of Gannon’s participation on that panel. Here’s how Black’s properly gay friend John Aravosis puts it:
Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend (see the link for Pam’s explanation of what transpired) and I simply could not lend our names to helping giving Gannon credibility as an authentic gay journalist and civil rights pundit - as though somehow Gannon is the respectable conservative counterpart to our blogs and our voices - so we both pulled off the panel last night after five days of begging the moderator and the conference organizers to give the people what they want - a panel discussion about the Gannon affair from last year, or at least making the Gannon issue one of the main issues the panel would discus
See how that works? Because Aravosis and Spaulding weren’t going to be allowed to make Gannon himself a topic of ridicule and an example of Republican hypocrisy, the panel was suddenly no longer worth their participation. Aravosis and his ilk shall be the ones to determine who is authentic, thank you.
Democrats and liberals do this sort of thing a lot —but never seem to fully grasp how presumptuous they are. Gay people? They are obligated to be Democrats. As are blacks, Latinos, women, and whoever else. Gay Republicans? These people must be self-loathing and deluded chumps.
Oh, and this is what I wrote just as Black dropped the hammer on me:
Look. The only reason why the Guckert thing took off was because it gave ostensibly tolerant liberals a free chance to use a man’s homosexuality against his fellow partisans.None of the rest of it, once the facts were faced, was helpful to the cause of tolerance or intellectual honesty.
The wankers at Eschaton deny this, of course, but it’s still true.
