Hoaxer James Guckert

One of the saddest and most revolting of modern-day hoaxes was the George W. Bush administration's use of a ringer calling himself Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions in presidential briefings and press conferences.

The man's real name is James Guckert, and he is a fellow who has quite a past.

In his phony role as a reporter, Guckert was credentialed as a correspondent for an equally phony news organization called Talon News Service, controlled by a major GOP supporter of President Bush.

Questions about Gannon finally began to be asked in February 2005 after one especially loaded, unprofessional question addressed to the president by "reporter" Gannon.

Soon it came to light that Guckert had no journalistic experience, but had worked as a male escort (male prostitute) and had posed nude for unsavory websites. He had used the same alias for those jobs.

This dreadful indication of how low the Bush administration was prepared to go came roughly one month after three syndicated columnists had been outed as taking money from the administration in exchange for supporting Bush policies--without revealing the payoffs to their readers. The three were Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Mike McManus. The third of these writers, remarkably,did a column on ethics and religion.

Lord, Lord.