http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20QUESTIONS.html
March 20, 2005 QUESTIONS FOR JEFF GANNON Blogged Down Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Q Should I call you Jim Guckert or Jeff Gannon? My Amex card still comes in the name of James Guckert, but I want to be called Jeff Gannon. That is who I am. Or rather it is the pseudonym under which you gained access to White House press briefings for two years, until your identity was revealed. Why do you think they let you in? I don't know the answer to that. I don't know the criteria they use. I asked to be let in, and they allowed me to come. I was very fond of all the people in the press office. They treated me well. They probably treated me better than I deserved. Are you suggesting that Bobby Eberle, the Republican operative who hired you to shill for his Gopusa under the guise of his Talon News service, has special access at the White House? I just don't know the answer to that question. Scott McClellan, the press secretary to President Bush, called on you and allowed you to ask questions on a nearly daily basis. What, exactly, is your relationship with him? I was just another guy in the press room. Did I try to curry favor with him? Sure. When he got married, I left a wedding card for him in the press office. People are saying this proves there is some link. But as Einstein said, "Sometimes a wedding card is just a wedding card.'' You mean like "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar''? That wasn't Einstein. That was Freud. Oh, Freud. O.K. I got my old Jewish men confused. You should learn the difference between them if you want to work in journalism. I'd like to get back into journalism. I'm hoping someone will offer me a job as a commentator or one of those political analysts that you see on the news shows all the time. What are we supposed to make of the fact that before reporting for Talon News, you had never had a job in journalism and apparently earned your living running a gay escort service? 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. How did you get your job at Talon News? I had submitted some opinion pieces to Gopusa. I believe they were picking up wire feeds, and Bobby Eberle wanted to supplement that with original reporting. He came to Washington for some business, and he called me. It was a breakfast meeting. Were you paid for your pieces? Yes. I received a kind of stipend. I assume Eberle fired you after you asked that now-famous question of President Bush at a press conference in January, suggesting that Democrats had "divorced themselves from reality.'' I wasn't fired. I resigned. I made the decision by myself after I learned that my family had received threatening phone calls. I decided this is what had to be done to try to make that stop. What do you mean by your family? My mother. She is 72. I am a big boy. I can take this. But it's so hard on my mother. She has to reconcile all of these things, and it's difficult. Do you find it hard to be a gay conservative in this country in light of the right-wing hostility to gay rights? I prefer that to be a private issue. I am more interested in national defense, taxation and immigration than in personal issues. I would like people's personal lives to be behind the barrier once again, like they used to be. Still, it seems fair to ask about your position on gay marriage. My position is that I can't imagine that gay marriage would be something that I would be interested in in the first place. I actually like being alone. I have decided that is how I want to live. I have a dog named Winston. I am still the same to Winston, no matter what, and there is comfort in that. Winston doesn't watch the news. But for those of us who do watch the news, are you interested in defending one's right to pose in the buff, as photographs on the Internet indicate you have done? 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. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Take a look at donorschoose.org, an excellent charitable web site for anyone who cares about public education! http://us.click.yahoo.com/_OLuKD/8WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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