How Bloggers Caught Some Conservatives With Their Pants Down
Republicans Gone Wild
The man on the message, taped several years ago off the MegaMates/MegaPhone gay dating service, described himself as “very muscular, very buffed up, uh, very tanned...” He continued: “Uh, I just like to get together with a guy from time to time, just to, just to play… get naked, play, and see what happens, nothing real heavy duty, but just, fun time, go down on him, he can go down on me, and just take it from there. Hope to hear from you. Bye.”
Most gay staffers and insiders in Washington had agreed on whose voice was on the recording: former Virginia Representative Ed Schrock, Republican. At the time the message surfaced, Schrock was considered one of the most conservative—and certainly one of the most anti-gay—of all members of Congress. He’d co-sponsored the constitutional amendment seeking to ban same-sex marriage. He’d spoken out against the inclusion of gays and lesbians in the armed forces, stating, “You’re in the showers with them, you’re in the bunk room with them, you’re in staterooms with them. You just hope no harm would come by folks who are of that persuasion.“ And—if the rumors are correct—he’d solicited sex on MegaMates/MegaPhone.
The tapes were made public in August 2004, on blogActive.com, run by Washington gay activist Michael Rogers. Within 11 days, Schrock had resigned his seat, and has to this day never confirmed nor denied the allegations against him.
After another six months, another prominent conservative—”Jeff Gannon,” reporter for online "news" source Talon Media—would resign his own post after images from his personal hustler pages emerged. “Gannon,” the journalistic and sex-trade pseudonym of James Guckert, would become the obsession of blogs on the Left and the Right, and the damning images of him—naked, erect, even pissing—circulated repeatedly in links labeled “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work). Bloggers devoured the story in all its sensational detail: from his hourly rate ($200) to his domain names (hotmilitarystud.com) to his sexual role (top only, no kissing). Here the footwork begun by a coordinated team of bloggers on the site DailyKos.com was once again continued by Rogers at blogActive. And Rogers has remained Gannon/Guckert’s bugbear, as recently as early April, when Rogers shouted out a question to Gannon/Guckert, who was a panelist in a discussion of the shifting definition of “journalist.” Rogers asked him whether he had ever had sex with Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Though the panel was wrapping up, the question was caught on microphone, and, subsequently, broadcast nationally on CSPAN-2.
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