Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpenguin/3104336570/">arcticpenguin</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).
The Obama White House says Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan isn’t gay. But one conservative email fundraiser isn’t buying it. Vision to America, a conservative email list, blasted out a message to its subscribers on Monday: “CBS: Obama nominates Lesbian Elena Kagan to Supreme Court.” The headline refers to a blog post that CBS was forced to retract after the White House complained. The Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz explained at the time:
Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would “please” much of his base by picking the “first openly gay justice.” An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.
CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: “The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010.” She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger “with a history of plagiarism” who was “applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers.”
The network deleted the posting Thursday night after Domenech said he was merely repeating a rumor.
Domenech, as you may remember, was a colleague of Kurtz’s at the Post for three days in 2006 before he resigned after being accused of plagiarism. But that hasn’t stopped Vision to America from allowing its advertiser—the “Pray in Jesus Name Project”—from citing Domenech’s CBS “reporting” while trying to sucker conservatives out of their money with the usual “pay $17 to fax 17 senators” scam. Anyway, Stephanie Mencimer has a great piece with a lot more on the claims that Kagan is gay—including details about “Pray in Jesus Name” and the guy behind it. Check it out.
