Playwright Needed

By Scott Horton

There are times when I’m convinced that the great Bertolt Brecht has not passed from this earth but has simply found a new job writing copy for a wire service. Dana Milbank reports on a central event in today’s National Prayer Day services:

“This isn't that kind of event,” explained Jeff Gannon, spokesman for the host, the International Bible Reading Association. Gannon, actually a pseudonym for James Guckert, had earned fame in 2005 representing a conservative Web site at White House briefings until it was revealed that he posted nude pictures of himself on the Web to offer his services as a $200-an-hour gay escort.

Let us pray for the power to understand how Gannon made his way from HotMilitaryStud.com to the International Bible Reading Association.

Mr. Guckert indeed was a White House favorite, regularly called upon in the press room to ask questions which had been planted by the press office.

In 1941, on a bitterly cold night in Sweden, as he awaited escape to the United States, Brecht penned these lines: “Great political criminals must be betrayed, and principally by exposing their essential ridiculousness.” Brecht had just seen Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” and in the following weeks he authored one of his most important plays, “The Avoidable Rise of Arturo Ui.” Brecht didn’t get along so well in America, but something tells me today he would find the wealth of material absolutely irresistible.