The president's escort: a GOP operative--and male escort--got two years of access to the White House press room. Just who gets to ask Bush a question?

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth thing is so last year. The latest group to rock the nation's capital is a news service with a clawlike name and a self-described hot military stud on staff--who's also for rent.

For those who've been living in a cave, here's a recap: Bloggers recently pulled the mask off a White House reporter calling himself Jeff Gannon; his real name is James Dale Guckert. Guckert had spent much of the past two years getting into the White House press room on minimal-security-clearance day passes, representing the Web site Talon News and its more openly biased parent site, GOPUSA.com. Both are part of a conservative propaganda machine run by a Texas Republican activist. When not asking the president conservatively slanted softball questions, with invented facts occasionally thrown in, Guckert apparently had another job: as a $200-an-hour (or $1,200-a-weekend) escort advertised on the sites HotMilitaryStud.com, MaleCorps.com, and others.

"Putting all 'hot man-to-man action' issues to one side, we have yet to get an explanation of how an operative for a Republican PAC got professional journalistic access to the White House without a background check," notes David Ehrenstein, a Los Angeles journalist and blogger. "Clearly, some higher-placed individual in the Bush administration was waving him in. Whether any other sort of 'waving' went on as well has yet to be established."

Says David Brock, founder of the group Media Matters for America, which tracks right-wing bias: "I think that the real nub of the issue isn't that there was somebody in the White House press room who is conservative and was asking questions that were loaded. It had more to do with the deceptive aspects of it. I don't think that anyone would have been able to anticipate that."

If Talon is a legitimate news organization, why not use Guckert's real name and get him a permanent pass, complete with FBI background check? Playing by the rules has worked just fine for the D.C.-based gay press. Washington Blade reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. has had a permanent pass to the briefing room for years. "I have never been called on by Clinton or Bush in a presidential press conference," says Chibbaro, "but I'm usually called on by the [White House] press secretary [Scott McClellan] during the daily briefings." Chibbaro adds that McClellan has also answered questions after briefings.

Conservative pundits, including Ann Coulter, have bent over backward to exploit the gay twist to the story in order to malign Guckert's critics. On CNN's Reliable Sources, John Hinderaker, a rep from PowerLineBlog.com--the right-wing Website that was one of the first to question Dan Rather's eventually discredited report on Bush's Air National Guard service--called the exposing of Guckert "flat-out gay baiting."

"Clearly any questions regarding 'gay baiting' should be directed at Mr. Guckert himself," responds Ehrenstein, "as he did so regularly."

Blogger John Aravosis, who was on the CNN show with Hinderaker, also smells hypocrisy. "The only gay people conservatives are willing to embrace are Mary Cheney and a hooker. Perhaps someday they'll embrace the rest of us."

Guckert may need some embracing about now. At press time he was trying to sell his suggestive Web addresses, asking $15,000 for HotMilitaryStud.com.

Under the radar 

How far will the Bush administration go to sweep GLBT Americans under the rug? Far enough that it dares not speak our name regarding vital health services. For a Portland, Ore., conference in February, a seminar titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/ Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals" was renamed "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations" under pressure from the Department of Health and Human Services. After receiving hundreds of complaints, the agency backed off and allowed the original title. Erasing the "GLBT" had been purely a suggestion, an HHS spokesman said.