On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:26:03 GMT, Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

From The North County Times, 2/26/05:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/02/27/news/columnists/jacobs/18_52_142_26_05.txt

On the fast track to fascism

By: PAUL JACOBS - For The Californian


Years ago, a Temecula activist group circulated an antigrowth
petition.

Stone, a councilman at the time, signed the petition with an assumed
name.

The political climate was running pretty hot in those days and perhaps
Stone lost his cool for a brief moment.

No harm was meant or came from the action, but that minor political
scandal caused a local murmuring brouhaha.

Stone has matured and gained wisdom as a statesman to more than make
up for that somewhat amusing and insignificant indiscretion.

Recently, there has been a far more egregious case of an imposter in
the White House that is being largely ignored by the media.

The revelation that a member of the White House press corps used an
assumed name during presidential briefings for two years should draw
some media attention.

Considering the unvetted reporter with an alias had a lurid past with
connections to gay Internet porn sites that include his own image, the
story should be getting boffo coverage.

Had this scandal occurred during the Clinton years, the press would be
frenzied, doing cartwheels to repeatedly report this titillating tale.

There would be gleeful tears in the eyes of grateful news anchors, not
seen since the days of Monica's blue dress.

But the media has not tenaciously followed the Bush scandals with the
rabid fervidness inflicted upon the Clinton administration.

Maybe Jeff Gannon isn't the only shill in the news industry.

Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, attended White House press
briefings for the past two years with day passes issued from the Bush
press office.

According to the few media reports I could find on the story,
Guckert/Gannon had minimal credentials as a reporter before receiving
the pass, but he did have ties to a Republican group called
gopusa.com.

Gannon never asked the president any hard questions and most of his
reporting consisted of copying White House press releases.

The charade might have continued had Gannon not drawn attention to
himself by asking the president a leading question that included a
partisan snipe that Democrats divorced themselves from reality.

It was recently discovered that the White House paid at least three
journalists to promote administration policies and programs.

Now they have been caught putting a plant amongst seasoned journalists
to lob softball questions during press briefings.

This is a level of propaganda that Soviet-era journalists must find
nostalgically impressive.

It is exceedingly suspicious that the news media hasn't jumped all
over this story that is certainly as scandalous, salacious and
scintillating as the sex and celebrity scandals that seem to be
non-stop fodder for the news media.

The news blackout of this juicy story is distressing.

America's corporate and political elite control the news media.

Freedom of information and speech are quickly becoming relics of a
bygone republic.

America is on the fast track to fascism.

________________________________________________________

Sieg Heil!

Harry