MISSING THE POINT: I've gotten a lot of lefty email like this piece from Andrew Moyers:
So you think it is alright to have a gay male prostitute in the WH press room? Where were you when we needed you? You can have done great work in defending Bill Clinton's discretions.
Dude, I think you mean indiscretions. And I did coauthor this book, which was seen as generally pro-Clinton, enough that Lanny Davis used it as a text. But, see, I'm a libertarian -- I've got no problem with gay male prostitutes. Or even gay female prostitutes (they have those, right?). Heck, I'd legalize prostitution -- gay and straight -- if it was up to me, and think of its practitioners as every bit as respectable as other professionals like lawyers, lobbyists and journalists. (Maybe moreso, as I suspect the client satisfaction rate is higher . . . .)
What I don't quite get is when the Left became such a bunch of obsessively puritanical, curtain-peering Gladys Kravitz types. Lighten up, guys! It's only sex, and as we all know, especially post-Clinton, sex, and lying about sex, is no big deal!
UPDATE: Wrong link for "obsessively" above -- fixed now. Thanks to reader Rick Francis for pointing it out!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein slams Howard Kurtz. Ouch! Mickey Kaus can only look on in wonder. And envy.
MORE: Reader Thomas Castle emails:
You are, again, missing the point entirely. The problem with Gannon isn't that he's a gay male prostitute, it's that he's a vetted WH reporter using a pseudonym and masquerading as a journalist when he is, in fact, merely a shill. THAT'S the offensive part. This business that he was booted because he's gay, or a prostitute, or both is bogus, although I'm sure some of the fundies do indeed have a problem with it.
I don't know. That's not what Moyers was saying, and what I was responding to. But let's see: "Masquerading as a journalist when he is, in fact, merely a shill" would disqualify rather a lot of the poseurs I see shouting at press conferences. As for the gay angle being why he was booted -- that's what Howard Kurtz said, and I believe it. And while you can claim that this isn't really about the gay angle, a quick look at the juvenile gay-themed stuff on the lefty blogs suggests otherwise. I should also note that while Moyers did charge that Gannon was a gay male prostitute, I don't think that's been clearly established. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
