[Previous entry: "IF I HEAR THIS PHRASE AGAIN I’M GOING TO SCREAM!!!"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of Deficit"]

02/22/2005: "A Peek at the Reality of Right Wing Reality"

What great timing! Just as SherWright is clarifying its focus on mining laughs from the right wing’s divorce from reality, a story pops up that’s just too wacky to be a story. The icing on the cake is its connections to right wing reality in many delicious layers. I’m speaking of course of the Jeff Gannon episode (could he have been the same Jeff that left that immoderate remark in the SherWright guestbook? Just so you know, we clean those out so that our loyal readers can be confident that their visit here will always be an enjoyable and thought-provoking experience). Anyway, Jeff Gannon is the credentialed journalist from hotmilitarystud.com, as well as GOPUSA.com, both clearly mainstream press organizations deserving of access to the Leader of the Free World. While this is a pretty funny reality, real reality is even funnier. It turns out that Jeff Gannon isn’t his real name (it’s James Guckert). At least he could have picked a funny name, like I did! (Mine’s based on what my kids used to say when I gave them a lame lecture). And hey! I’m not getting into the White House press room anytime soon. I particularly like that a columnist for the leader of the mainstream press, the NY Times’s Maureen Dowd, sought to have her longstanding credentials renewed but was denied. Now that’s Bush Administration reality! (She’s lucky her cover as a CIA operative wasn’t blown) The best reality angle of all is the best-known question to be asked by the correspondent from hotmilitarystud.com to the Commander in Chief: “Mr. President, how can you work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality.” The irony is overwhelming! I only wish I knew how Bush responded. If he was true to GOP reality, it would have been something like this: “Jeff, they just haven’t learned the political reality that voters expect you to tell them they can have big tax cuts at the same time you’re giving them new government benefits.” Or maybe “Jeff, the reality is that America is the global source of entertainment, and what’s more entertaining that the life and death spectacle of optional war?” If we’re really going after reality, how about “Jeff, how can the Christian right show off how holy they are if not by voting for the candidate most like them, the one wearing his holiness on his sleeve? Duh!”