Salon’s Eric Boehlert is joining the left wing blogosphere in freaking out about the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story:

On Feb. 17, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams introduced a report on controversial White House correspondent James Guckert by informing viewers that the saga was “the talk of Washington.” Nine days later the mysterious tale of an amateur, partisan journalist who slipped into the White House under false pretenses remains the buzz of the Beltway. Yet most mainstream reporters have opted not to cover the story. Two of the television networks, as well as scores of major metropolitan newspapers around the country, have completely ignored it.

Put me down with Bob Somerby on this one:

Of course, we can’t say why news orgs have behaved as they have. But why might the press have ignored this story? Could it be because it’s hopelessly trivial? In our view, the fascination with this story is another sign of the liberal web’s imperfect judgment—its tendency to confuse the wheat with the chaff, its inability to get a read on what sort of stories really matter.

Readers, why would a mainstream news org spend its time on this trivial story? Until last month, no one had ever heard of Jeff Gannon. At the time, he worked for Talon News—and no one had ever heard of them either! And except for one stupid question he posed to George Bush, Gannon-Guckert’s terrible sin was asking dumb questions of Scott McClennan, another person no one has heard of! Meanwhile, Gannon is hardly the only conservative kook asking dumb questions at McClellan’s daily sessions. For example, kooky talk host Les Kinsolving asks stupid questions in this forum every day—and no one has ever said Boo about that. It’s not clear why readers of any big paper would gives a rat’s *ss about Gannon’s behavior. Why did news orgs ignore this story? Perhaps because it simply ain’t news! Perhaps because no one in the fifty states gives a rat’s *ss about Gannon’s questions.

And Andrew Sullivan is right to point out that there has been far too much glee at the outing of Gannon/Guckert.

Can we move on to something important now? Thanks.