By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

I knew I was hooked on the radio show last night when it got pre-empted by a University of Tennessee basketball game. “The Lady Vols suck!” I scowled bitterly at the thought of going to bed Drudgeless at 9 p.m on Sunday. If I have to get a perfectly good night’s sleep on account of those Dixie chicks, I’m not a very pleasant person to be around Monday morning. But as with the registered heroin addicts of Great Britain, bureaucracy came through for me: the sports crap switched off at 11:13 and the talk channel resumed its regularly scheduled program, granting me just enough of a Drudge fix to get through the day without posing a menace to society.

How did all this happen? I’ve never been a fan of conservative talk radio, have voted Democrat since high school, and don’t exactly gravitate toward people who have problems with critical thinking, spelling, discretion, and matching clothes. I refuse to have anything to do with the tabloids linked on the Drudge Report. I would not let my children read a newspaper that carried Liz Smith or Rush & Malloy. In college, I once refused to do a creative writing project that required me to purchase a scandal sheet and write a poem about one of its articles. (The professor allowed me to photograph the tabloid in the store with the story headline clearly showing.)

Gossip, ladies and gentlemen of the Web, sucks. Unfiltered news, good. Gossip, bad. I just wish the line between them were more distinct.

I wasn’t even aware of Matt Drudge’s existence until a friend of mine ended up on a Drudge Report exclusive over something that I can assure you, while worthy of due media attention and scrutiny, was, in fact, only a joke mushroomed way out of proportion. I didn’t realize Matt was the smoking gun that led to Cigargate until I saw his mug in a public relations textbook. My friend, a consummate mensch in every sense of the word who never shared Matt’s penchant for attention, lost his privacy and his job in part to the Drudge Report. His name will always be floating somewhere around on the Web.

Okay, so why do I read the Drudge Report? Why do I listen to Drudge Radio, and why do I waste time debunking rumors that Matt probably deserves, anyway?

And the thing is, for a guilty pleasure, Drudge isn’t all that sybaritic. Why blow your diet on a Slim Jim at the corner market? Why max out your Visa on a trip to Chernobyl? Why have an affair if you’re just going to rendezvous in a cheap motel room?

Well, I can’t answer all those questions in one fell swoop. How much fun would that be?

But in a nutshell, doing research for a project put me up close and personal with all things Drudge. I now have Word documents of nearly every article on Matt on the Web, everything he’s said on record, I have transcripts of his Fox TV show, speeches and shows he’s appeared on, and excerpts from radio shows when prank callers targeted him. Everything that’s escaped his lips is highlighted in yellow on the computer screen I’m keying into right now.

Let’s just say that for me, Drudge is an acquired taste. The first time I tuned into the radio show last July, I fell asleep in an hour after hearing dead air and “25-year-old computer geek” repeated ad nauseam. Granted, there are more soothing ways to get to sleep than listening to an audio recording of Terry Schialvo sans feeding tube, which sounded like a cross between a creaking door and a parakeet being tortured. Nor is the theme to Cat People he played last night exactly Brahms’ “Lullaby”. As I’ve hinted before, Drudge Blog ain’t no fan site. I’m not commissioning some 600-foot Drudge statue, arms outstretched over the hills of Rio de Janeiro. Captivated as I may be by his boyish charm and sarcastic Web copy, I’m all too aware of Matt’s limitations to lean over and smooch his posterior (or to scale said replica and do the Blarney stone thing).

Like many people, I suspect, I find keeping up with the news to be an exhausting task. The older I get, the less likely I am to be the first to pipe up with my opinion on something. I find that the more I read, the less I really know about the world around me. Everything we are fed is a layer upon layer of filtering, contextual distortion, and creative writing. I know from working on a college newspaper that everything is an interpretation of an interpretation, and even the most conscientious reporters can find their original story distorted by editing…even by the most well-meaning editors. Unlike the Old Gray Lady, I’m not the first name in news. Unlike Drudge, I’m not the first. I know a little about a lot and very few things in great detail. But one thing I have absorbed through osmosis and do feel I can discuss intelligently is Drudge — who he is, what he does, how he does it, what his philosophy and politics really are, his M.O., and whatever he has willingly shared with the press. And as a student of public relations, philosophy, and human behavior, I think I can offer a better analysis of all things Drudge than anything currently available on the Web.

I do have a bit of an agenda in contributing to Drudge Blog: I want to clear up misinformation — good or bad. I want to discuss angles that haven’t been covered in the media. A lot of what people “know” about Matt or the Drudge Report is based upon misunderstanding and upon rumors that, if I can’t categorically disprove, have serious questions about. I base my commentary not on original reporting, but upon analyzing the information already out there, paying particular attention to “raw” interviews and actual Drudge quotes and correspondence.

Over the next few weeks, Drudge Blog will carry special essays that will challenge your understanding and knowledge of Matt Drudge. If you check out last week’s Drudge Quiz, you might find that he’s not so predictable and pigeonhole-able in a lineup of other media figures.

Now that we’re done with preliminaries, I’ll get started. Scrub up, strap on the rubber gloves, and let the exploratory surgery begin!

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.