drudge blog

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

I’m pumping adrenaline to make deadlines this week, but I wanted to respond on record about Drudge’s seemingly hypocritical silence over the Gannon/Guckert imbroglio before it officially became old news.

You may notice from earlier posts that Matt had other squirrels loose in his boxers over the past two weeks. He’s big on those privacy issues, and of course the Paris Hilton hacking is good copy and he got one of the “victims” for an on-air interview.

Were it a slower news day when the Gannon story broke, I think he would have covered it a little more both on-air and online and followed up on his initial posting as things developed. But an underlying “theme” in three unrelated news stories was undoubtedly too good for him to pass up last Sunday.

Matt did mention Gannon for the second time last night and confirmed what I’d thought before: he just doesn’t consider it that monumental in the grand scheme of things. As he put it, “now the whores are in the press room instead of the Oval Office.”

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

Ever the libertarian, Drudge devoted last Sunday’s show to the common theme of privacy issues…particularly the Patty Hearst Symbionese Liberation kidnapping - OOPS! I mean, the Paris Hilton Sidekick hacking. I did think it amusing that he wasn’t above calling all those private numbers on Paris’s “golden cell rolodex” himself to find someone to comment. As a rule, he doesn’t go out of his way to get comments on stories. Even the unknown comedian whom Matt interviewed on-air received hundreds of calls…which reminds me of another little blast from the past…

Circa 2000, MSNBC gossip columnist Jeannette Walls released Dish, which alleged that Matt had gay relationships. Caveat: I do not believe this rumor. I have read this book in its entirety, of which only 4 pages are devoted to Drudge, and I have serious questions about her sources and context - and those of the other gay rumors — which I want to get into more thoroughly in a longer entry. While Walls said that “my publisher and I absolutely stand by every word I’ve said,” it seems neither felt behooven to include Jeannette’s source’s other tidbits - that Matt allegedly preferred smearing raw eggs on naked guys, once had a bad case of crabs, and liked to have sex fully clothed in the shower. (Remember: a rumor is all in the packaging. And she wasn’t too grossed out to print a story about Robert Mitchum smearing ketchup all over himself, as she claimed to be about the eggs. )

Matt responded with the following headline: “Drudge had sex with eggs! Share your own Drudge sex stories with Jeannette Walls.” Hundreds of people contacted her via private number and e-mail. Strangely enough, none of them offered her new Drudge gossip.

Hypocrisy? I’m not so sure. With Walls, he did what was most hateful unto him. With Hilton, well, he finds people’s private numbers at Switchboard.com anyway, and - what can we say, our Matt just couldn’t resist.

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.

This will be a quick post but I had to note it. Drudge is great at creating relationships on the Drudge Report that can be humorous, or even that provide a social commentary. He does it just with the juxtaposition of 2 or more headlines (or photos). Today is a great example of that. He has the headline, “Man Charged With Plot to Assassinate Bush…,” which is a serious story about a terrorist-tied plot. But then grouped together just below it: “Belgian Government Touts Bush Urinal Targets…” There’s an accompanying pic of the urinal target to really drive home the “targeting” fun.

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

From bloggers to traditional journalists, the media slams Drudge for taking things out of context by, in turn, taking him out of context themselves. See why I prefer raw interview footage to edited features?

Drudge graced Hannity and Colmes’ presence earlier this week, reiterating the same comments he made about Chris Rock on Sunday night’s radio broadcast. Before agreeing with today’s bloggers that he’s on a witch hunt to kick Rock out of the Oscar host gig, watch a clip of Drudge’s Hannity appearance here.

As I hinted in my last entry, Matt did get a bit silly last Sunday with his Chris Rock monomania, but mostly from the standpoint that he thinks Rock’s a pottymouth who made some jokes he found outrageous — the quip that no straight black man would watch the Oscars, the joke that he picks up women at pro-choice rallies and that the fact that abortion is legal is beautiful. Yes, Matt read that as “abortion is beautiful”, but does that mean he’s going out of his way to get Rock replaced as host?

The gist I got from Matt’s attitude was: the Oscars should be about the art, and while that ideal may not have been realized in previous years, having Chris Rock host makes it all the more farcical. (Note that I didn’t say I agree.) If Matt does have a grudge against Rock, it might be because Chris threatened to kick his “red-blooded American foot up his un-American ass” over a year ago. But as I’ve said before, Matt’s reactions are typically very knee-jerk and emotional. He has responded, both on-air and in Drudge headlines (”Comic Threatens Violence Against Drudge”) as though he takes Chris seriously.

Like all of us, Matt listens for what he wants to hear. Never was this more obvious to me than last fall when he played, ad nauseam, the audio clip of Elizabeth Edwards responding to a voter’s concerns about riots if Bush were re-elected. “Not if we win,” came the reply, with the stress inflection on “win”. But every time Drudge played the clip, he repeated back, “not if we win…” If he takes things out of context, it’s because he perceives them out of context, not from a conscious agenda or exterior nudging.

Can we all just shut up, kiss and make nice, and agree to take things in their proper context?

Oh, okay.

The most common misconception perpetuated about Drudge today is that he’s a Walter Winchell wannabe and a pawn of the right wing. Much of what we see on the Web and in traditional media outlets is based on this paradigm. Now, one could argue that as much as Drudge seems to take photos and quotes out of context, perhaps he gets what he deserves when he’s misunderstood. Indeed, this isn’t the Matt Drudge Fan Club site. I’m not here to protect him from criticism…just wipe his tears and give him a hug and a pep talk when he turns to me for solace and support. But before I let a 38-year-old man slobber all over my dry-clean-only suede tunic, let me include some excerpts from his August 1998 interview with Playboy. I can neither link to it online nor include the entire article because of copyright considerations, but I think this is the happiest medium.)

…The first president I remember was Jimmy Carter. I was ten years old. I liked him, and still like him. Yeah, I wish Jimmy Carter were still president. He’s decent and I think he told the truth. That’s my number one priority. It’s not “the economy, stupid.” Who cares?…I’d rather pay $3 at the gas pump and have a decent president than have gas at 99 cents and someone lying to me and making me sick….The president should represent what we are.

*
… I am a libertarian, not trusting any of them. I especially don’t trust the people who want to lead us at the turn of the century. They want to take the important issues into the new millennium….

Later, the interviewing editor points out the reports that Matt “idolize(s)” gossip granddaddy Walter Winchell.

Drudge: He turned pretty ugly in his late years, thinking he had a lot of power. He started using it and calling people Communists. What he did to Josephine Baker was pretty nasty. He’s not my role model. I use him as a map, studying his work, studying his language. He fevered it up. He made people really emotional, which he loved. He used the sound of a telegraph, but there was no telegraph. He would drink a bunch of water so he had to piss, and it made everything he sound urgent. All of it was showbiz.

Drudge: Ahh. That may have made the difference. Especially if he weren’t single. People who want to serve the public are in a different arena. We have to hold politicians to a different standard.

Okay. Now that Drudge’s M.O. is all cleared up, we are all free to take it out of context!

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

(I’m postponing today’s planned follow-up on the 1998 Playboy interview to address a favorite Drudge “schtickelah” that came up in last night’s broadcast.)

Rhyme him, slime him, warn him out of town while he still has his life, just don’t lump him together with Wonkette. One of Matt’s charming paradoxes is that he thrives on public castigation, but nothing pushes his buttons quicker than being reduced to a malapropism like the b-word. So far I haven’t heard too many charitable words from Drudge about the growing politico/journalistic bloc of individuals inhabiting what we’ve come to know as the “blogosphere”.
But today’s edition of the New York Times has moved him to defend the bloggers in a somewhat rare moment of online alt-journalism solidarity. As with the Drudge Question in the late nineties, the media is feeling the effects of the growing power of “rampant, unedited dialogue” that has a potential to both unearth truth and wreak havoc.

Matt took particular exception to Columbia Journalistic Review editor Steve Lovelady’s comments that “The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail.” That actually reminded me of something he told Playboy in 1998 : “I have my own Web site, my own slice of media, and there’s nothing my critics can do about it. I figured this out early on. If they slime me, it creates more of me. ” There’s only one Drudge, of course, but blog’s name is legion.

Now that there’s a multitude of unchecked, ungatekept Web presences, the game has changed but the hypocrisy stays the same. “The main press is vicious, slanderous. They’re constantly settling libels,” he railed against the Times last night. “We at Drudge have been doing this for ten years. This didn’t start yesterday.”

Matt sees the mainstream media as “marginalizing individuals on the Internet with words that sound stupid.” Long a word that he’s loved to hate, claiming it sounds too much like “booger”, he seems to have made peace with the “bloggers” — deriding the term “blog” as a “nasty, demeaning, obnoxious word for people who dare to publish without a symbol on the New York Stock Exchange…not part of the clique, not part of the crowd.”

Matt unearthed another word I hadn’t heard in awhile: the “me-zine”, an early epithet to describe this Internet legacy we’re all trying to figure out.

(Check out one good rundown of the me-zine/blog history here.)If this writer’s position is correct, and I do find it sound, then it would follow that the Drudge Report is actually a precursor to the blog — not an antiquated ancestor like the harpsichord to the modern piano, but a “mother” genre with its own distinct characteristics, only a step behind in the evolution of literature but just as culturally current.

Blog? Blogger? Me-zine? Internet journalist? Cyberjournalist?

The crux of the problem, as I see it, is that a “blog” or “weblog” is a vague term to cover a few different concepts, while the Drudge Report is one of the first, if not the first, site of its kind which no one has no one has really figured out a name for. To break it down, a weblog is a multiple-use Web format that can be used — or used to describe — many different things (whether correctly or incorrectly). Public journals like Xanga or Diaryland can be theoretically described as a blog. So can a political commentary like Wonkette or gossip like Gawker. If you’re recently out of college, like me, chances are you’ve been regularly referred to a prof’s weblog of links and commentary. Then again, some independent, online news reporting is done on what is best described as a blog because it is adapted to the specific “entry log” format. Is the Drudge Report a blog, and if so, what’s so bad about that?

The real problem with describing Drudge Report as a weblog is not in its supposed stigma, but that it’s a misnomer. If we think of it literally, then we could call a weblog a linear series of entries, often with links within a website’s graphic borders. Going further, we might agree that the central feature of a “blog” is the series of installments of “copy” — the blogger’s original Web copy as opposed to headlines or linked material. So what is the difference between a news blog and the Drudge Report?

First, a caveat: dictionaries don’t plop down from the heavens. They are created by normal, colon-voiding human beings whose only difference from you and me is that they’ve studied language concepts more comprehensively. You and I have as much right to coin words and play a role in the evolution of their meaning as William F. Buckley, whose name is one of several “experts” in the preface of my American Heritage Dictionary at home. On the Web, we’re all 800-pound gorillas. We can do anything we want to with or without sanction from linguists and recognized experts like the retired National Review head honcho. But like with the folks who bring you Webster’s, it takes a village to develop language, for a word to become used and accepted. Anyway…

The Drudge Report, although it’s not made up of a collection of pages, is set up like a comprehensive news site. It does not center around or focus on a daily, linear “installment” of news. Rather, its feature is the collection of headlines itself. Links are an amalgamation of stories, news columnists, and a few strays like Drudge Report Archives. Matt’s original news stories are linked both by his own name and by the headlines to the stories themselves. If he wanted to, he could include a blog within this multi-use site….but the blog would not be the site and the site would not be the blog.

On a news blog, the author’s installment is the feature and the links are secondary. On an independent news site like Drudge, the link features are the foci and the individual news stories, even his own, are secondary.

Okay. So if he considers blogging a respectable news format, why’s Matt been so ornery about being herded onto the bloggers’ paddywagon, and why is he pulling a John Kerry on them now?

I would argue that Matt, like the rest of us, is touching and feeling his way through the changing mediascape and a victim of the very same emotionally charged name manipulations foisted on the weblog authors. The mainstream press may not agree or specify exactly what a blogger is, but it’s decided what it thinks of blogs and the level of legitimacy it’s going to render unto them. Matt reminds me of straight guys whose own “masculinity” has been challenged growing up and who aren’t too eager to socialize closely or sympathize publicly with men who really are gay, but who, when put to the test, can get past their insecurities and show more understanding and flexibility than previously thought possible. Who knows? Maybe a love-hate relationship with the blogging community will continue to unfold over at Drudge. But just for today, in the face of a common enemy, Matt’s willing to be our Valentine.

P.S. Today’s Drudge Report headline - and last night’s colorful riff on Chris Rock - is even more intriguing with a little background info on Matt’s past tangle with him. Now, we at Drudge Blog do have a soft spot for Matt. We’re kinda hoping Matt’s own soft spot doesn’t come in contact with Chris’s red-blooded American foot.

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.

Drudge is reporting on how the Grammy ratings plummeted for last nite’s show. I actually watched for a while and I have to say they were pretty lame. There was a lot of good music last year, but it mostly didn’t make this show. They tried to make it interesting with the live performances, but mostly lame. J-Lo and Mark Anthony in a Spanish soap opera? Green Day doing live a song that could have been made in 1994… Eeeek!

Matt Drudge loves the TV and Radio ratings race. It’s central to what he’s about and I’ve read that this was actually how the Drudge Report was born. He’s always been the inside guy on ratings and enjoys being the first to publicize them. Although he does focus on the sectors he likes, such as news or live events like the Grammys.

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

Last weekend I curled up with a specially ordered August 1998 back issue of Playboy featuring — what else? — an interview with Matt Drudge. Raw interviews are the best form of journalism, in my opinion; they leave as little as possible to the middleman and quotes can be understood in their correct context. Unfiltered news in the spirit of the Drudge Report… In this case, readers could see that Matt was getting quite a bit of an ambush from the Playboy editor, who was as aggressive, if not more so, than the journalists who reluctantly received Drudge at his Washington Press Club speech around that time. Playboy Dude was so busy with the cross-exam that he never even got around to asking Matt’s bust measurements, hobbies, or turn-ons/turn-offs. Nevertheless, the Drudge spread outshone that of Downtown Julie Brown and The Women of Iceland…and his exposed parts didn’t even get airbrushed.

Speaking of cheesy photographs…this is the origin of the Sam Spade-esque photo gracing the cover of Drudge Manifesto. As someone who works in PR, one of my major frustrations with Drudge is that he constantly shoots himself in the foot with really stupid posturing like this. Check out the Playboy article and you’ll see it’s one of three printed shots from the same photo shoot. One shot looks pretty normal, another, where Matt’s laughing candidly, makes him look incredibly cute. See, if you cull all the candid images out there, he’s an attractive young man…even now. But when he “strikes a pose” like this or this or this…or this…even this, he has the mien of a sleazy, bottom-feeding old fart. I can’t even look at those “hand on chin” shots without cringing.

Can’t someone out there just give this guy a big hug before a photo shoot?

Even if they don’t really mean it?

Matt, if it will prevent further photographic debacles like this, I’ll fly down to Miami and fix you a batch of homemade latkes and pecan kugel right before you let someone shoot your mug again. I’ll won’t even use bottled applesauce — for the sake of the future of unfiltered journalism, I’ll bake the apples in their own skin. Say the word and I’ll even throw in a bowl of soup — all ingredients made from scratch, of course. I’ll even give you a few gentle pats on the back while your food’s digesting and scold you a little while the camera and backdrop is being set up. Deal?

While Matt’s thinking my proposal over, Monday’s blog will go into a little further detail about tidbits in the Playboy “reveal” that challenge the conventional perception of Drudge as a right-wing Walter Winchell wannabe.

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

This week marks the anniversary of Drudge’s most celebrated blunder to date since Sidney Blumenthal dropped his libel suit - the Kerry “intern implosion” exclusive that turned out to have no basis in fact. Matt said years ago in the Washington Post that he didn’t maintain his own archives because he didn’t want the humiliation of having his words come back to haunt him. (The since-linked Drudge Report Archives is created by someone else and, like Drudge Blog and Drudge Forum, not connected with Matt.)

But a careful study of the development of this debacle not only reveals the innocence of John Kerry and Alex Polier, but also the division of responsibility among all the journalists and sources in this faux scandal. While the “Kerry intern” tale is known chiefly to be a “Drudge story”, it seems that Matt actually took more responsibility for his actions than some of the other players…and more so than a few people who had a more direct role in the story’s creation. I encourage everyone to read New York ’s The Education of Alexandra Polier, Alex’s autobiographical account of a rumor-in-the-making. From made-up quotes by the Sun to out-of-hand misunderstandings to pundit commentary published without carefully reading and understanding of the subject, this is one of the best case studies out there on the nature of journalism, the origin and complex mechanics of libel and slander, and the challenges of public relations.

The really sad thing about the Alex Polier rumor is that no matter how thoroughly or convincingly she may prove her innocence, she may never be completely freed from its legacy. Some people will always hold onto it — and, indeed, false “stories” remain in cyberspace long after their foundations have been disproven. One website author included Alex’s link but said he didn’t bother to read the six pages. (Why not? He did bother to provide an otherwise comprehensive run-down of her fiance’s family and wealth and social influence.) Such are the constraints of publicity - not only are we guilty until proven innocent, but the onus is on us to prove our innocence in a sound bite. Nobody’s going to conduct careful research of a rumor before packaging it, perpetuating it, basing mainstream opinion journalism on it. Nobody’s going to read a six-page account of The Scandal That Wasn’t five months after the fact. You’re old news by then. What’s an innocent slander victim to do? Drudge himself has been a victim of this and will continue to be.

To be honest, I did wonder whether Papa Drudge’s presence in Matt’s home influenced his reaction to Alex Polier’s phone call. You could argue that he was lying that his father “just arrived for the weekend”. Maybe Matt was in a good mood that day. Maybe he was caught off-guard. Hell, maybe that good old-fashioned Jewish guilt finally kicked into his psyche after all these years. But having read Matt’s raw interviews, et al, from dozens of sources to date, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt.

My strong impression of Drudge from all the research materials I’ve culled is this: he tends to have very knee-jerk, pride-fueled reactions to personal attacks. He’s used to people going after him to discredit him and ruin his career, and he responds to criticism of most kinds from that emotionally charged paradigm. He’s pretty bad about not making apologies even when they’re called for. Being criticized in public or on air makes him all the more determined to stick to his guns and maintain the upper hand, even when it’s probably foolish. But if someone were to contact him privately and calmly explain their grievance with him, as Polier apparently did, he’d probably react quite differently.

I wasn’t totally sold on Matt’s apology to Sidney Blumenthal — I didn’t think he sounded sufficiently sorry to have publicized an unproven rumor of that gravity. But the Blumenthal case was different in several ways. His lawyers gave Drudge five days to reveal his sources and sued him for $30 million when he refused. Most importantly, there was an inappropriate use of White House resources (human and otherwise) to further a private lawsuit. (No, I don’t think Drudge was literally “sued by the White House” as he likes to say and think, but the truth isn’t too far from that.) Justified or no, I think that if Matt had not been politically ambushed by Blumenthal and the Clinton Administration, he would have shown more remorse and humility for that famous mistake.

Had Matt been a jerk with Alex Polier on the phone, I’m sure she would have made that clear given her thorough account of the other guys who spread the rumor about her and cowardly eluded her when she decided to confront them…and also her fair recounting of the reporters who were more conciliatory. I’d love to know exactly what was said in the 40 minutes Matt and Alex spoke, but maybe what we have says it all. Ultimately, I gained more respect and understanding for dear old Drudgemuffin after reading the Polier story.

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.