The other big gay scandal of the Bush years was bungled completely by the mainstream press. In January 2005 a blogger named Jeff Gannon who was a regular at White House briefings finally attracted the attention of his peers when George Bush called on him at a press conference so that Gannon could lob an exceptionally soft softball question at the president.

A little checking turned up the fact that Gannon’s real name is James Guckert, that he had been rejected for a congressional press pass because of his lack of experience as a journalist, and that he had another interesting sideline — as a prostitute.

Until he was exposed by the blogosphere, the White House had for some reason been giving Guckert daily press passes for two years. How could this have happened? Guckert told Anderson Cooper there was no mystery — White House officials “aren’t interested in reporters’ sexual history,” he said.

Obvious questions were never answered: Who was Guckert’s patron in the White House, and why was he or she so eager to allow the nonreporter access to daily press briefings?

Imagine how reporters would have reacted if they had discovered a female prostitute had been granted special treatment by Bill Clinton’s press office during his administration. But because this story was about a gay hustler and George Bush, the Washington press corps just shrugged.

Two months after the story broke, the mystery deepened when two Democratic representatives — Louise Slaughter and John Conyers — forced the Secret Service to release White House logs under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about Guckert’s comings and goings. Raw Story reported that Guckert had made more than 200 White House visits — including 24 appearances when no White House briefings had occurred. On at least 14 occasions, records showed that Guckert’s entry or exit time was missing from the logs. On several visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry point than his usual one, and one day he actually checked in twice but never checked out.

http://www.out.com/detail.asp?page=3&id=23655

So, what’s the deal here?