James Dale Guckert owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen websites. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.” (J. Seinfeld) Under the (obviously fake) name of Jeff Gannon he became accredited as a White House correspondent (!), evading the usual FBI security check (!!), and being planted by the Republican party (no exclamation marks here, coz there really isn’t anything surprising or notable about this bit) - the party of homophobia. “Jeff Gannon” asked the president questions such as “How are you going to work - you said you’re going to reach out to these people - how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?” Faux News anyone? (Needless to say, the propagandists at Faux News just loved the guy!) The other day, his cover was finally blown.

Now this all sounds like a clip from a comedy show, but it’s real. Read commentaries/summaries by Frank Rich (probably the best), Sidney Blumenthal, and Joe Conason. Also quite comedic was the mock outrage, displayed by some tool from the New Republic, the other day on PBS, outrage directed not at a party, which was trying to introuce Soviet-style pseudo-journalism, but at the “left-wing” people - lots of bloggers - who had dared to blow the guy’s covers. You gotta admire the guts of those people!

In a sense, this whole episode summarizes perfectly the presidency of George W. Bush, the first perfect faker in the White House. There is nothing real about this guy, not the touted compassion, not the claimed leadership, not the credentials as a soldier in the National Guard, and definitely not the faith.