Or, if you prefer, this Rovian nightmare may soon be “Guckerted.”

What in the Sam Hill am I talking about?

Oh, c’mon now. You all remember Jeff Gannon. Mr. Gannon was a writer with the now defunct Talon News who by day, was a mild mannered reporter that got a daily White House pass to attend press briefings and ask softball questions of Scott McClellan.

It was Mr. Gannon’s nighthawk activities that were, um…a little, shall we say, unusual.

It turns out that Mr. Gannon was actually one Mr. Guckert, male model, escort, and possible homosexual prostitute. And the left, to put it mildly, went ballistic. It was all Gannon-Guckert all the time at Kos, DU, Atrios, and a host of other lefty blogs. There were questions that needed to be asked, screamed the lefties. What kind of questions?

So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we’re talking about. It’s looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a “daily basis.” They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, “inappropriate,” whatever. Monika wasn’t a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can’t find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Since the White House knew…something, is it possible that someone in the White House was sleeping with Guckert?

This was the next phase of the blogswarm. Speculation on who was sleeping with Guckert ranged from Scott McClellan (”He’s cute!”) to Karl Rove (”He’s got the power!”), to Republican Chairman Ken Mehlman (”He’s single!”)

All the while the story was churning on the lefty side of the sphere, the rest of the world went on with its business, paying no attention to this three ring circus that got more and more bizarre as the weeks went on. The MSM paid no attention. Conservative bloggers paid no attention. Even the White House press corps let out a collective yawn. Then like spoiled children, the left began to throw a collective tantrum that this hugely important story wasn’t being covered by anyone. They whined that, as the idiot above from Americablog breathlessly pointed out, “Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it?”

Well, so much for the prescience of Americablog.

Finally, one by one, the lefty’s gave up and went back to what they’re good at - trashing America and spouting conspiracy theories. The Gannon-Guckert story passed into history, a victim of something the left could never grasp: Just because they said so didn’t make it true.

And now another lefty blogswarm is in full churning mode with the Rove-Wilson-Plame imbroglio and history has a chance of repeating itself. The Rove story may become “Guckerted.” That is, the lefties may once again be churning up a lot of froth that in a few days, may fizz out. After all, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has made it clear that Rove is not a target of his investigation. And as many bloggers have been pointing out all day, there’s a very good chance that Rove himself may have been informed of Plame’s status as an employee of the CIA by another reporter, which would explain Judith Miller’s hesitancy to name her source. She could be protecting a fellow journalist. The idea that she would be protecting Rove, who has released journalists from any pledge of confidentiality, is loony.

So Rove, legally at least, appears in the clear at this point. But, as I speculated yesterday, I doubt whether he’ll be able to hang on to his job. Judging by the very impolite and pointed questions asked by the White House press corps yesterday and today, Rove may be gone by the end of the month.

And this scandal, like the Gannon-Guckert brouhaha, will disappear from everywhere but the conspiracy minded lefty blogs who will cling to the idea that if they only try a little harder, they’ll be able to bring down the President himself.

UPDATE

Tom Maguire keeps plugging away at this story. One of the more fascinating aspects that hasn’t been talked about much in the MSM was this apparent war that was going on between the Administration and a faction at the CIA who were rabidly partisan Democrats. As the prospect for finding WMD in Iraq faded, this faction saw an opportunity to not only hurt the Presisdent’s re-election chances, but also shift blame for their titanic failure off the shoulders of the CIA and place it in the lap of the Administration:

Here’s Maguire post from yesterday.yesterday. I’m lazy so go to his site for all the links in this update:

MORE UPDATES: On the subject of CIA factions, here is Walter Pincus, in his famous June 12 piece that relied on Wilson as a source (and was ridiculed by the SSCI report):

And does the “indicative of larger problems” ring of the “fake but accurate” defense - ignore Wilson’s misprepresentations and confusions; if he brought “a little literary flair” to his storytelling, it was because Bush lied!