My impression from an old Washingtonian friend who attends NPC events pretty often is that they basically get whoever they think will be entertaining and/or a big draw, with little thought about fairness or representing conflicting views. I doubt this is an exception.

What about those of us who have no idea who any of these people are? "Jeff Gannon" is the only name in this paragraph that even looks familiar, and I have no idea who he is.

I think maybe this is a good thing.

True. It's too bad there isn't some kind of world-wide information network we could all tap into. If there were, my post could have had tags attached to particular words and proper names which, when invoked with special "browsing" software, could direct the reader to supplemental reading matter about the subjects under discussion.

Mind you, if we had something like that, we'd probably just use it to trade pictures of our cats.

Can you substantiate the notion that the National Press Club's event scheduling is handled or even remotely affected by anyone associated with the "crazy right wing"? It's a shame, of course, that Gannon ever dares to show his face in public again; but as Robert L. suggests, the very controversy around Gannon might be just the thing that attracts schedulers (i.e., infamous names draw an audience).

I'm not suggesting that the National Press Club is run by the crazy right wing; I'm pointing out that one of the reasons the CRW is successful at pulling the country in their direction is that they never ignore slights and the rest of us generally do.

Aha, I think I misread your last sentence. You were saying, "Because they do this stuff [meaning that they complain about slights]," whereas I read it as, "Because they do this stuff [meaning that they promote Gannon at the National Press Club while ignoring left-wing bloggers]."

(This is neither here nor there, but I find it interesting that quite a few right-wingers claim to be unhappy with Bush for being too much of a moderate/liberal on a host of issues: Medicare, education, campaign finance reform, assault weapons, immigration, etc.)

Patrick, you're allergic to cats, all you'd *have* is pictures.

Have you see last week's Doonesbury? (I'm almost through last Sunday's WashPost now.) Roland has become the new Jeff.

From what I've heard, Jeff Gannon has shown a bit more than his face.

He's one of the people for whom the question "Have you no shame?" is rather ludicrous.

Beyond that, he's simply a way to pack the house.

A few years from now, we'll see him on hair transplant infomercials.