I’ve just been waiting for this, knowing that Joseph Farah couldn’t help but put foot in mouth in this situation. But even for Farah, this is astonishing. In a delightfully silly column called No Substitute for Real Journalism, Farah gives us his take on the whole Gannon/Guckert ordeal. He eagerly calls Talon News and Guckert “pretenders” and contrasts them with the professional standards of the Worldnutdaily. And if you’re not laughing yet, stick with me. After admirably noting that, “Maybe the reason the White House didn’t mind looking the other way when it came to Gannon-Guckert was the fact that he was only too eager to lob softball questions at press conferences”, he says:

I have no doubts that the people who launched Gannon-Guckert in his ill-fated journalism career probably looked at the success of WorldNetDaily and said to themselves: “We can do this. Any one can start a website and claim to be a news operation, get access to government and use this platform to spread our ideology, befriend politicians we like and buy influence with politicians. It looks easy.”

However, what the political activists pretending to be journalists never understood – and still do not understand to this day – is that you can’t fool everyone.

WorldNetDaily has succeeded in reaching millions and influencing the rest of the media because it does not pretend. I founded WorldNetDaily only after working inside the news media doing everything one can possibly do for more than 25 years. WorldNetDaily’s mission is to telling the truth – no matter whose ox is gored. WorldNetDaily hires only serious and experienced journalists with the highest standards of ethics – both in their professional lives and their personal lives.

That’s the WorldNetDaily difference – something easily missed by political activists who want to hitch their wagons to the New Media trail blazed by WorldNetDaily and WorldNetDaily alone.

Now here’s why this is so funny. The Worldnutdaily has a reporter that attends the daily press briefings and press conferences at the White House too. His name is Les Kinsolving. His day job is as a right wing talk radio host in Baltimore. You want softball questions with a clear political agenda? Try these on for size, all asked by Kinsolving at White House press briefings:

Following a report that John Kerry swore at a Secret Service agent after running into him on a ski slope: “… you can assure us, can’t you, Scott, that the president will take some action to assure that no more Secret Service agents be subjected to such vile abuse by Democrat nominee, Kerry?”

“Since many of the families who provide a lot of our armed services recruits are religious, what does the president, as commander in chief, believe would be the effect on recruiting of the Kerry plan for openly advertising and practicing sodomist sergeants and commissioned officers?”

“The California Democrats have put together a number of recorded telephoned comparison spots against Schwarzenegger, including one by the reverend adulterer, Jesse Jackson, and another by the presidential adulterer, Bill Clinton. And question: Since the president is understandably interested in this California election, does he see the incredible behavior of the Democrats in trying to critique a reported groper with two nationally notorious adulterers?”

“Does the president know that of these California federal judges who ruled that voting machines that re-elected Gray Davis are now illegal, one was appointed by Jimmy Carter and the other two by Bill Clinton?”

“The Boston Herald reports that during an interview, Boston’s mayor, Thomas Menino, who is, as you know, the national co-chairman of the Kerry campaign, called the rest of that Kerry campaign — and I quote — ‘small-minded and incompetent and trying to find a scapegoat for their incompetency.’ And my first question: Neither the president nor anyone else in the White House would find fault or disagree with Mayor Menino, would they?”

Now that’s “real journalism” for ya. So is the constant pimping of books about UFOs and “biblical giants” building the pyramids. For crying out loud, the owner of the Worldnutdaily is lecturing someone else about professional journalistic standards. This is a lot like the owner of the National Enquirer delivering a speech bragging about his high ethical standards for honest reporting. They just don’t make irony meters that can withstand this kind of blast.