No sex, please: We’re liberals! (continued)

Still, Kurtz, like many mainstream journalists, has heard from critics on the left who wonder why he doesn’t report all that he knows. Readers of the Web site Raw Story, for example, know that there are rumors involving a high-ranking, married White House aide who may or may not have had a homosexual affair with Gannon, and who may or may not have provided Gannon with a confidential document concerning the investigation into who leaked the identity of former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.

This is piling rumor upon rumor. And in any case, Gannon told Anderson Cooper that reports about his having claimed to have seen the Plame document were based on a misunderstanding. In fact, he said he’d only seen a Wall Street Journal article describing the document.

"I’m a big fan of bloggers, but the blogosphere has also become a repository of a lot of mean-spirited rumors that seem unaccompanied by a shred of evidence," says Kurtz. "I am not going to publish any such unsubstantiated crap without being able to pin down the facts. That’s one of the things that distinguishes the much-maligned mainstream media from the freewheeling world of the blogosphere."

Susan Ryan-Vollmar, editor of the Boston gay-and-lesbian newspaper Bay Windows (and a former Phoenix news editor), points to another angle the media ought to explore, and that is hypocrisy: Gannon not only worked for an anti-gay Web site that promotes a president who opposes same-sex marriage and other pro-gay initiatives, but Gannon himself last year wrote that John Kerry "might someday be known as ‘the first gay president’ " because of his support for gay rights. In other words, Gannon was asking for it.

"You don’t want to appear like you’re gay-bashing by going after this guy, but it’s not gay-bashing," says Ryan-Vollmar. Indeed, Media Matters, perhaps the most mainstream Web site to pursue the Gannon story, is run by the well-known conservative-turned-liberal David Brock, who’s gay. Americablog, which has broken some of the seamier aspects of the Gannon matter, is a gay-oriented site. John Byrne, editor and publisher of the Cambridge-based Raw Story, is gay, and is no stranger to outing those he sees as hypocrites.

Still, the essence of the Gannon matter is that he received special treatment from a White House that is always looking for innovative ways to manipulate the media. If Gannon’s sexual proclivities somehow helped him to obtain access, that ought to be investigated. But until there’s proof, the mainstream media are right to tread lightly.

"I think the idea is, does this guy’s sexual preference have anything to do with what’s going on at the White House?" says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on Politics, Public Policy, and the Press, at Harvard’s Kennedy School. "Because that’s one thing and politics is another. And it certainly looks like it might have something to do with it, and that should be pursued. Especially since the White House seems to use these credentials as a reward-and-punishment system. So what was he being rewarded for? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened. It’s certainly legitimate to look into it."

Look into — but, without proof, not touch.

COLUMNISTS ERIC Alterman and Cathy Young are at each other’s throats. It began on February 7, when Young, who writes for Reason magazine, suggested in her weekly Boston Globe column that Alterman might be a "self-hating" Jew whose views would be considered "anti-Semitic" if they had been written by a non-Jew.

Alterman’s offense, in Young’s eyes: writing on his MSNBC.com blog, Altercation, that he could not find fault with the British Muslim Council’s decision to boycott 60th-anniverary ceremonies marking the liberation of Auschwitz. Among other things, Alterman wrote that "the Palestinians have also suffered because of the Holocaust. They lost their homeland as the world — in the form of the United Nations — reacted to European crimes by awarding half of Palestine to the Zionists.... To ask Arabs to participate in a ceremony that does not recognize their own suffering but implicitly endorses the view that caused their catastrophe is morally idiotic."

On February 10, Reason’s Web site ran both the full text of Alterman’s letter of response to the Globe and a response from Young, who said, "I think it is entirely possible to argue that Israel bears the primary responsibility for the enduring Middle East conflict, and consequently for the suffering of the Palestinians, without being anti-Semitic. But, of course, that was not what Alterman wrote, and that was not the issue in this debate." Nowhere, though, does she address her use of the "self-hating" phrase, which is clearly what placed her column out of bounds. (By the way, Young herself is Jewish.)

There things stood until February 15, when Alterman unloaded on Young in Altercation, and blasted the Globe for publishing Young’s column, for the way it truncated his letter to the editor, and for not running letters it had received defending him from Young’s accusations. "There are many journalistic issues raised here regarding the Globe editors’ irresponsibility in allowing it to be used by a know-nothing ideologue like Young," Alterman wrote, promising to return to the issue in the future, in Altercation as well as in the media column he writes for the Nation.

The Globe’s normally mild-mannered ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, delivered a rebuke to Young this past Monday, calling her criticism of Alterman "not up to op-ed page standards," as well as "ad hominem and inappropriate." Regular Chinlund readers know that, for her, that’s unusually tough. Even better, she provided a link to the Altercation item on this piss fight, titled "Slandered by the Globe."

So is this over? Not by a long shot. On Monday, Alterman posted 14 questions on Altercation that he wants Globe editorial-page editor Renée Loth to answer, promising "to publish all of the answers in full on this site, thereby offering the Globe far greater courtesy than it offered me following the publication of the slanderous piece." Gee, Eric. Only 14?

Unlike Alterman, I only have one question: how could a toxic suggestion that Alterman is a "self-hating" Jew make it through the editing process? Young is entitled to her opinion. Alterman’s reflections on the British Muslim Council were pretty provocative, and were exactly the sort of thing I would expect a columnist like Young to react to.

But the "self-hating" characterization was an ugly smear that never should have found its way into print.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy@phx.com. Read his Media Log at www.bostonphoenix.com