I will be posting shortly about the abrupt end of the illustrious reporting career of Jeff Gannon (aka, JD Guckert; that's right, he used a fake name). But here is the question that started the unraveling of Gannon's rise to fame. During a January 26, 2005, briefing at the White House, Jeff Gannon of Talon News asked the following:

Q Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there's no crisis there. 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?

Source: The White House

The president was in the midst of a complete whipping by the press over his Social Security reform and the Iraqi occupation when he called on Gannon for some instant relief. However, this question was so biased, so out-of-context, and so bush-league, that people started to wonder, "Who is this guy, where did he come from, and how did he get press credentials?" The resulting investigation that took place in the blogoshphere led to the quickest downfall of a White House correspondent in modern history. Stay tuned.

Labels: bush