DU Off the Deep End

Democratic Underground Internet Detectives Link Our Eternal Hero Jeff Gannon To Long-Missing Boy, Rush Limbaugh, Presidential Pedophiliac Sex-Cults, and Satanic CIA Agents

Not a joke, alas.

I wish the MSM would stop treating all "blogs" alike. First of all, DU ain't a blog. Second of all, The New York Times would not be pleased to have the sins of the National Enquirer charged to its account. (Or maybe they would; the National Enquirer is nearly as accurate as the NYT lately.)

I-- uh, I mean Ace -- has said this a dozen times: When the media speaks about blogs peddling insane crazy theories, they're generally talking about left-wing sites. It's the left-wing sites-- including the biggest, "respectable" ones -- that traffic in this sort of insanity.

Have you ever seen this sort of crap in any big right-wing blog? Sure, right-wing blogs traffic in crazy theories, like claiming that Rather used transparently-forged documents to prove his AWOL case against Bush, but damnit, these crazy theories keep turning out to be true.

Start the insanity:

Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh.

The Iowa paperboy was kidnapped in 1982, with unsubstantiated stories emerging later from his mother that he was abducted into a child pedophilia ring. No trace of him has ever been found, and no suspects have been arrested.

Nearly 23 years later, White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, who wrote for a conservative Web site, was exposed in February as James D. Guckert, a man with no journalism experience and links to several gay escort addresses online.

If you have the time to read a few hundred Web postings, you will see how Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon, two completely unrelated individuals, became the same person on the Web. The way the theory developed says much about the anything-goes nature of the blogosphere and self-proclaimed reporters on the Internet, who seem to find accuracy and proof a nuisance in uncovering fantastical conspiracies.

It took the random efforts of scores of Web loggers (bloggers), credulous readers and longtime followers of the case to assign the two men a bizarre, shared backstory involving satanic CIA agents, pedophiles and presidents. And, of course, Limbaugh.

...

The Gannon-Gosch conspiracy theory first appeared on the message board of a liberal political site called The Democratic Underground on Feb. 26. A site regular, using the name TwoSparkles, speculated that Jeff Gannon was victimized by a government-organized child pornography ring.

Then he foreshadowed the future with this note: "I found this picture of Johnny Gosch. I looked at it and almost thought it looked like Gannon! It must be getting late." The image was a school picture of Gosch taken in the 1980s and later enhanced.

The same poster noted that Gannon/Guckert and Gosch had the same initials.

Wow! The same initials! That's... not very persuasive at all.

Before long, other site members were trying to figure out whether the ages matched. (In fact, there would be more than 10 years' age difference between Gannon and Gosch.)

Big deal. We've got that "same initials" thing going.

...

Bloggers [of what political leaning, might I be so bold to ask?] picked up on the theory and soon the yarn was developing on hundreds of sites, many linked to one another. Entire blogs, or Web journals, are now devoted to the subject of whether Gosch grew up to become the disgraced reporter.

The complete concoction goes like this: Gosch was kidnapped into a pedophilia and child pornography ring that serviced the upper echelons of Washington, D.C., society. He was brainwashed by the CIA, trained to be part of a top-secret escort program. Then, he became Jeff Gannon and was given a plum job as a White House correspondent with the online conservative news service to keep him quiet.

Finally, he was "uncovered" by the bloggers.

...

The most fervent bloggers on the Web aren't as interested in linking Gannon to Gosch as they are in presenting their version of a massive conspiracy. The story that excites them is a sordid tale about the CIA operating a pedophilia ring on behalf of dignitaries and politicians and training male prostitutes to serve as spies.

They try to link both Bush presidents to this conspiracy, prove that Hunter S. Thompson's death was not a suicide and investigate a so-called government-sponsored pedophilia operation they claim continues to abduct children.

...

Several bloggers suggest Gosch was brainwashed or has multiple personalities. "He may not have any idea," observed a visitor using the tag "ohmygosch" on http://mparent777.blog -city.com.

Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City police officer and longtime investigator on the Gosch case, said becoming a White House reporter is completely in character for a former victim of the pedophilia ring.

In fact, Gannon/Guckert may have orchestrated the scenario for a greater purpose.

"Is it possible he drew attention to himself during that Jan. 26 press conference to pique the curiosity of citizen investigators?" posited one blogger.

...

But the Internet always has answers. White, for instance, explains why newspapers aren't interested in this story.

"Have you ever heard of Operation Mockingbird?" he asked.

It's another theory. It argues that the press is being controlled by the CIA.

Read. The Whole. Thing. I don't know why I bothered to excerpt at all, except to draw you in.

Insane. Insane. Insane. And yet the media just won't call a spade a spade.

I don't seem to remember them having the same reservations about branding the anti-Clinton crazies -- and some were crazy, let's admit; some of us here might even have had a touch of that lunacy at one time or another -- the addled cranks that they were.

Thanks to DB.

ALSO: thanks to Russ from Winterset. He actually tipped me first, but I didn't get around to reading his tip. I thought it was just a link to DU moonbattery -- i.e., the site itself -- which I gotta tell ya I'm sick of wading through. But it was an eariler tip to this article.

Sorry to not credit you, Winterset. I, Hoke Malokey, am a douche.

Update:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Hello, is this the Democratic Underground? I'm so fuckin' into you. I want to make you crazy. Make. You. Craaaazy.

posted by Hoke at 04:26 PM

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