From "Jeff Gannon" to the Daily Show

Frank Rich of the New York Times provides this effective - and, frankly, frightening - overview of the whole "Jeff Gannon" White House press corps incident. "Gannon" was the fake news guy who kept being allowed into White House press conferences to ask softball questions to Press Secretary Scott McClellan or even the president himself. Rich explains the rest as follows:

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

That's why if you're going to let Talon News into White House press conferences you should really also let in "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Fair enough?