by Philip Curtis
ePluribus Media
Also posted on Dailykos
Did I know sin before I knew salvation? Absolutely. But, this is a country that believes in redemption and second chances and I’m looking forward to mine.
— Jeff Gannon, CBC’s The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos, 05/10/2005
Screen shot of JG from CBC’s The Hour, “Press, Politics and Prostitution”
Although Jeff Gannon has offered repeated reassurances that he has moved on to a new life, several Web sites appear to continue to market the former White House reporter’s services as a male escort. Domain names for two of these active Web sites were first registered several months after he began regularly attending White House press briefings. Often aided by media support, Gannon has employed a variety of arguments to deflect attention from escort-related questions. He has neither confirmed nor denied the specific allegations, nor has he designated a time when he may be willing or able to do so.
Argument 1: An Invasion of My Private Life
Gannon has characterized allegations against him that do not directly relate to journalism as an assault on his personal life. He explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
How I’ll address that is that I have made mistakes in my past. And these are all of a very personal and private nature…What’s been done to me is far in excess of what has ever been done to any other journalist that I could remember. My life has been turned inside out and upside down. And, again, it makes us all wonder that if someone disagrees with you, that is now your personal life fair game? And I’m hoping that fair-minded people will stand up and say that what’s been done to me is wrong, and that — that people’s personal lives have no impact on their ability to be a journalist, you know. Why should my past prevent me from having a future?
When Deborah Solomon of The New York Times confronted him with allegations of earning a “living running a gay escort service,” Gannon replied:
Don’t let that confuse the issue. We have driven so many good people from public service through the politics of personal destruction. People on the left who disagreed with me decided that I needed to be punished by any means necessary.
Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s Fresh Air interview appeared to echo Gannon’s argument in his defense of the White House press office’s handling of the matter:
As for his private life, I would fear the day if ever the government outside of the Secret Service for security purposes, but the government, started looking into the private lives of reporters.
Argument 2: A Left-Wing Conspiracy
In his essay “Fear and Loathing in the Press Room,” Gannon further described his recent encounters with media scrutiny as part of a larger movement:
The Left is engaging in “21st Century McCarthyism” in an effort to blacklist conservative journalists in order protect their domination of the media.
He offered no examples of other targeted journalists. However, Gannon did provide Lifelike Pundits with details of the specific tactics used against him:
What has happened to me is 21st Century McCarthyism; the Left is playing the sex card, despite spending most of the 1990s screaming that “sex is a private matter.” Don’t you have better things to do besides look at sexy pictures?
With the exception of a single Washington Blade article documenting Jeff Gannon’s purported attendance at a Virginia holiday party that “always turns into an orgy toward the end,” the media has not reported on any private sexual activities. Instead, it has focused on Gannon’s alleged work as a professional escort and its potential impact on national security issues.
Gannon’s comments to The Washington Post appeared to blur advertising as a paid escort with one’s “sexual history”:
Why would they be looking into a person’s sexual history? Is that what we’re going to do to reporters now? Is there some kind of litmus test for reporters? Is it right to hold someone’s sexuality against them?
Argument 3: A Hypocritical Attack on Gays
Gannon’s responses also blurred the distinction between being gay and being a gay escort. He described to Ace of Spades HQ his encounters with liberal antigay bigotry:
There is no doubt that the Left devoted so much ink to me because they hoped to humiliate and embarrass on the basis of perceived sexual orientation. They do the same thing to African-Americans and Hispanics who don’t toe the liberal line. It is clear that everything is on the table now when it comes to the politics of personal destruction.
Ann Coulter effectively summarized Gannon’s argument in her townhall.com column:
Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a website where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?
…Liberals’ hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media also offered his support to Gannon on this issue:
Gannon, who may or may not be homosexual, was targeted because there are some in the left-wing blogging community who believe homosexuals can’t be conservatives in good conscience.
And PBS’ Tucker Carlson empathized with Gannon:
I’m struck by how you were essentially outed, or these implications about your personal sex life, were made by people on the Left. Somehow the implication was because you may be gay, that you shouldn’t have access to the White House.
Gannon expressed the extent of his outrage to Carlson:
Well, I mean the hypocrisy is stunning. If I were a liberal there would be marches in the streets with pitchforks and torches in support of me. But because I’m a conservative, it seems to be that there are no rules and we can – those people can leave their principles behind about personal privacy and sex doesn’t matter and diversity and inclusion. They can leave all those things behind if it’s useful to attack somebody who’s a conservative.
Although Gannon informed The Advocate that “his sexual orientation is a private matter,” he was comfortable informing Vanity Fair that, “Some of his fiercest gay detractors had even come on to him … shedding their convictions `like a sweater on a hot day.'”
Argument 4: Legal Concern
Gannon has also responded by indicating he needed to comply with the wishes of his team of lawyers. When confronted with questions from Gay.com regarding his alleged escort activities, Gannon stated:
There is a great deal of misinformation and exaggeration surrounding these matters. While my lawyers review this information for libel, slander and defamation, they have advised me not to comment on any of these things.
Similarly, he informed the National Press Club, “You are speaking of things that have been alleged and I am not commenting on those things.”
Newsweek reported that he may elect to take the initiative to launch a legal offensive, “… considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a `political assassination’.”
Argument 5: Casting Doubt
Gannon’s responses have often cast doubt on the allegations without specifically denying them. When Anderson Cooper asked him about offering escort services, Gannon said, “Well, like I said, there’s a lot of things being said about me out there.”
In his New York Times interview Gannon implied that others may be responsible for obtaining images of him and publishing them on the Web:
We do have tremendous freedoms in this country, and one of the drawbacks of that is that people are free to take images of me and manipulate them however they want. At some point in the future, everyone is going to have a picture on the Internet that they are unhappy about.
Also addressing the alleged escort photographs, The Washington Post reported:
Asked how recently he was putting his photo on escort sites, Gannon said that “so much of this stuff” was “years in the past…. Anything that goes on the Internet is there forever,” he said. “Every day I learn about another site where there are allegedly pictures of me.”
Offering another variation on the story, Vanity Fair reported that Gannon:
…implies that he never actually worked as an escort, despite the fact that he advertised himself as one. Look. I could put up a Web site that says, `ImaMillionaire.com’– does that make me a millionaire?
Argument 6: Self-Deprecating Humor
Appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Gannon shelved his outrage and quipped, “[U]sually the way it works is, people become reporters before they prostitute themselves.”
Argument 7: Repentance After Finding God
Gannon has also argued that unspecified infractions had occurred in his past only before he found God. In February he expressed the rewards of God’s forgiveness at JeffGannon.com:
This is not to say that I have not made mistakes in the past. Like all of us have at one time or another, I made poor choices and exercised bad judgment. But I believe in a forgiving God who changed my life. It was through that renewal that I went on to have a career as a reporter and further blessed to become a White House correspondent.
He subsequently offered Vanity Fair a revised interpretation of the events of his life, however, employing a metaphor based on Christ’s suffering:
God, Gannon believes, bestowed a White House gig on him not as a reward for cleaning up his act, as he had first thought, but as, in a sense, another Station of the Cross, affording him a chance to burn away all his transgressions and purify himself once and for all.
The Active Web Sites
Vanity Fair reported that “whatever he did ended once he found God, sometime around 2001.” However, four of the nine escort Web sites that appear to continue to advertise Gannon’s services did not exist prior to 2001. In addition, two of the sites were registered after Gannon’s first known White House briefing on February 25, 2003: FindAMale.com was registered on May 30, 2003, and AllMaleEscorts.com was registered on September 26, 2003.
It is difficult to pinpoint the precise date a particular escort may have added his profile to each Web site. However, barring the unlikely manipulation of the Web server, one may assume that the escort was added between the time the domain was registered and the last modified date of the escort image.
John Aravosis’ AmericaBlog.com first published the escort allegations on February 14 of this year. Only one of the sites listed here, MeetLocalMen.com, was included in Aravosis’ article. Aravosis provided considerable data documenting Gannon’s alleged involvement in marketing his escort services at USMCpt.com. The images and escort profiles included in the eight additional sites identified by ePluribus Media are consistent with those found at USMCpt.com.
Warning: All of the following links contain adult content.
AllMaleEscorts.com
Domain Registered: 11/26/2003
First Archive.org record: n/a
Image Modified: 02/13/2005
BigCockSociety.com
Domain Registered: 12/30/2001
First Archive.org record: 01/30/2002
Image Modified: 07/26/2004
ExecutiveMaleEscorts.com
Domain Registered: 11/11/1999
First Archive.org record: 03/04/2000
Image Modified: 06/29/2004
FindAMale.com
Domain Registered: 05/30/2003
First Archive.org record: 11/05/2003
Image Modified: n/a
Guys4Rent.com
Domain Registered: 02/17/1999
First Archive.org record: 07/06/2000
Image Modified: 11/02/2004
INeedaMan911.com
Domain Registered: 03/08/2002
First Archive.org record: 06/02/2002
Image Modified: 09/22/2002
Archive.org indicates that the site was scheduled to launch in September 2002.
MaleEscorts.com
Domain Registered: 08/31/1996
First Archive.org record: 09/24/2004
Image Modified: 02/13/2005
MaleTreasures.com
Domain Registered: 02/12/2001
First Archive.org record: 12/02/2001
Image Modified: 06/29/2004
MeetLocalMen.com
Domain Registered: 07/25/2000
First Archive.org record: 12/06/2000
Image Modified: n/a
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