I have avoided blogging on this sensational topic simply because the fulltime liberal blogs are doing such an incredible job exposing a story that would have brought down any president except George Bush. The implications on numerous levels are simply staggering.

First there’s the fact that a non-reporter is not only given a daily pass into the White House press briefings, but is constantly called upon by Scottie Boy whenever he gets into a jam. This alone is dumbfounding, an blatant example of choreographing the news, an act of fraud, deception and boundless deceit. Then there’s the fact that he “writes” for a site owned by GOPUSA. Then there’s the fact that real journalists are ignored as Scotty fields JimJeff’s softballs, designed to attack and embarrass Democrats. And how did he ever clear his background check? What’s going on??

Oh, and did I mention that JimJeff was the man to whom our great leaders leaked information (false, almost surely) about the Valerie Plame affair? Information that smeared her husband Joe Wilson. (That smear generated one of the ugliest clusterfucks ever among the right-wing bloggers like Tom Maguire and Glenn, who came down on Wilson with a savage and unapologetic ferocity. Was any of it true? Does anybody care?)

And this is all a prelude before we get to the more lurid angle. I felt the liberal bloggers were jumping the gun, seizing on what last week seemed to be JimJeff’s possible association with a gay male escort service. I steered clear because it was too tenuous, too weak, too unsubstantiated — or so I thought.

Not any more. In a post of staggering importance, Americablog does the detective work and presents us with the hard evidence. It is shocking. It is unbelievable. It take blog sleuthing to a new level.

Imagine for one moment if the JimJeff scandal occured around Kerry. Or Clinton. Or Barbara Boxer. Imagine what Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson and Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus and Jeff Jarvis and Jonah Goldberg and Matt Drudge and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity would be doing. The inimitable Digby lays it out for us:

I do know that if this were 1998, we’d be knee deep in congressional investigations into the gay hooker ring in the White House. Every news crew in the DC area would be camped out on JimJeff’s front lawn. A wild-eyed Victoria Toensing and panting Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick would be crawling up on the Hardball desk rending their silk teddies and speaking in tongues while Matthews’ exploding head spun around on his shoulders.

But, it isn’t 1998 and it will probably not even be mentioned. And I’m not a Republican so I don’t think, as they would, that it’s necessary to dig into every single White House staffer’s sex life to find out who leaked a confidential memo to a gay hooker.

Well, if that famously liberal media won’t investigate it, we bloggers will have to pick up the slack: Shout it from the tallest rooftops. Link to it everywhere. Make it clear, we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. This double standard simply must stop. Once our news media fail us, once they become a mouthpiece for the government, none of us is safe. This is why always, absolutely always, the first thing tyrants do to ensure their stranglehold is seize and control the media, without exception. If our media are emasculated and helpless, the door is wide open for authoritarianism.

James Wolcott brilliantly refers to today’s press corps as “attack poodles.” If they let this go, if they acquiece to the right-wingers who will shriek that this is all about “personal stuff” that is none of our business, then we will know for certain that all is lost. For this is in no way a matter of “personal stuff.” As America blog says:

So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we’re talking about. It’s looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a “daily basis.” They reportedly made a decision to give him – one of only six – access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky – a tasteless episode, “inappropriate,” whatever. Monika wasn’t a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can’t find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. While they are surrounded by gay hookers? While they use a gay hooker to write articles for their gay hating political base? While they use a gay hooker to destroy a political enemy? Not to mention the hypocrisy of a “reporter” who chooses to publish article after article defending the ant-gay religious-right point of view on gay civil rights issue.

We are owed answers, which can only be forthcoming with the weight of a massive investigation. This is not about a guy with a willing and eager intern of legal age behind a closed door harming no one (stupid though that guy’s actions may have been). It’s about deception of the American people on a massive scale, originating at the very top.

My predictions: The issue will soon be dead in the water from lack of diligent follow-up (I sure hope I’m wrong), and fat Scotty will have to resign no matter what — he’s lost whatever microscopic speck of credibility he may have had left.

My thanks to the commenter, Dodo, who drew my attention to these excellent links. Don’t delay — just go there now.

Update: The story is picking up traction with that evil liberal media, which has until now been treating it with kid gloves. Now that the porn pictures are out, that’s gonna have to change.