On Gannon/Guckert

Perhaps it’s naïve, perhaps it’s overly optimistic, but I would hope that the background check that was run on anyone trying to obtain access to non-public areas of the White House would catch whether or not a person had ever worked as a male (or female) escort. I would hope that the check would also catch whether or not a person was working with an operating organization (Talon News, Gannon/Guckert’s “employer”, did not begin operations until almost two months after Gannon/Guckert’s first appearance at a White House press briefing.) I would hope that by the time someone was leaked an internal CIA document that a background check would have uncovered whether or not there was anything in the reporter’s background that would make the reporter a blackmail risk. I would hope that before a person received an invitation to an exclusive White House Christmas party two years in a row that that person had been vetted to the point that the vettors would know whether or not the person solicited themselves for $1,200 for a weekend (or $200 an hour, if you can’t afford the whole weekend) to men looking for a butch former military man to top them. I would hope that people would realize that this is an important story, that if this had happened in the Clinton White House the Republicans would already be talking about filing impeachment papers on it. (Side note - saw an interesting piece today where someone said that the biggest reason conservatives hated Clinton was that it was impossible to paint him as gay, the biggest smear they like to put on Democrats.) I would hope that people on all sides could see that, unlike the Jordan/CNN comments that were made offhand and immediately retracted, this is actually significant. But hey. That’s just me.