Roaches Check In, But They Don’t Check Out

Just when we thought he’d taken up permanent residence under a rock, boy prostitute turned GOP-friendly cub reporter Jeff Gannon has resurfaced with a vengeance.

Thanks to an FOIA request by two members of Congress, the US Secret Service has revealed the White House comings and goings of the former male escort better known to his mother as James Dale Guckert and to his clients as Bulldog. The Raw Story has parsed the details and served up a tidy little summary.

It seems Bulldog visited the White House 196 times over a period of two years, which would put him there more often than George W. Bush. In fact, on 30 occasions he was there when Bush was out of town and/or no press briefing was held. This conflicts just a bit with press secretary Scott McClellan’s claims that Gannon/Guckert’s attendance at press briefings was “sporadic.”

On 14 occasions, the Secret Service has a record of Bulldog entering the White House but not leaving, or signing out after having never signed in, or checking in one day, then checking out the next.

In other words, Bulldog may have gone on a few sleepovers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (The Secret Service report is mum on whether he packed a toothbrush or wore his bunny pajamas with the feet.)

Who was he visiting and for what purpose? One can only imagine the shenanigans that went on, the romping in the Lincoln Bedroom: “This time, you be Marilyn and I’ll play JFK.”

Or perhaps they took the party to a more private venue. Who in the Bush White House has the juice to get Bulldog past the Secret Service with a smile and a wave? Someone extremely powerful and very doughy (Mr. Rove, your cell phone is vibrating).

It’s delightfully sick. The most homophobic White House in memory allows a male hooker to come and go like his name was on the lease, and the hallelujah chorus takes a collective vow of silence. Terri Schiavo had more to say about Jeff Gannon than the Christian Right. Perhaps they’re all still hoarse from shouting about “judicial activism.”

Republicans in Congress apparently have their hands full covering their asses in the Tom DeLay debacle. Fox News & Co. have discovered reticence, though it’s unlikely they know what that word means. Any day now Powerline will be concocting a theory that Gannon was really a Democrat plant, and Ann Coulter will be writing about Helen Thomas turning tricks in the Roosevelt Room.

But nobody comes out of this looking good. The White House press corps continues to bleat like sheep, afraid to turn on “one of their own.” You could plant a lawn gnome in the front row of the briefing room and they’d defend its right to be there.

A gay prostitute in the White House is apparently too vulgar for the broadcast media, which would much rather spend its airtime on celebrity child molesters and guys who stuff their dead mothers in the fridge so they can collect the social security checks.

What’s most disturbing isn’t the fact that Gannon is a boytoy, a fake, a shill, an arm of the Bush propaganda machine, or a serious nutjob with unfettered access to the highest levels of government. It’s the notion that the Bushzis feel they can do whatever they damned well please, because people are too stupid to notice, too apathetic to care, and too powerless to do anything about it.

This is how fascism starts. We all know how it ends.