drudge blog

Last fall, I blogged about a conversation I recorded on Matt Drudge’s Sunday night show from a caller whom he’d heard from at least twice before. Each time “Kevin in New York” gets on the air, he immediately gets into a spiel about some publication from National Vanguard Books (a subsidy publisher, btw, who’ll take what no legitimate house will touch) about warning America about something. The first time he called, he was plugging something about an Arab and Jewish conspiracy that related to border patrol. Last September, it was “Who Rules America?” about the supposed Jewish conspiracy in the media. Last night he talked about Hollywood’s political agenda threatening white America with Brokeback Mountain and other things, and mentioned something about miscegenation.

Each time he calls, Matt lets him talk for a minute before cutting him off. The first time he thanked him, cut him off, and huffed, “Code White.” The second time, Matt knew enough facts about the media hierarchy to trip the guy up.

This time around, the conversation I was able to document went like this…

MATT. Were you at the rally in Orlando this weekend?

KEVIN. What rally are you referring to?

MATT. All right, I guess you missed the flier.

At that point, Matt cut him off and segued into a news about a study that showed that the Disney corporation, as a whole, gave more financial support to the Republicans than the Democrats.

Here’s why this piques my curiosity:

1. What the hell is going on with the radio screener? My research uncovered two prank callers who transcribed their conversations with Drudge on-air, including dialogue with the screener. Drudge’s screener, like most radio screeners, ask callers what they plan to say and then tell them to get right to the point and not ask him how he is. As I understand it, it’s rather challenging to get through to a national radio show. One Drudge callers say they’ve tried for years. So why is a bigoted wing nut who clearly has no comment other than to promote himself (I guess the radio equivalent of “trolling”) able to make it on-air 3 or 4 times in an 18-month period?

And doesn’t Matt recognize his voice by now? Why let him talk even as long as he does? (I clocked Kevin’s monologue last night at 60 seconds).

2. I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again. Okay. I can understand that Matt’s silence during Kevin’s “Jewish conspiracy report” spiel enabled him to get the upper hand over this idiot. But isn’t it time he tell him he’s Jewish himself? (Matt has, in fact, mentioned on-air and in the press that he’s Jewish, so it’s not as though he’s keeping it on the down low.)

Just another schtickele of mine, I suppose…

Some outside-the box headline design today on Drudge:

I don’t suppose all the detractors who dismiss Drudge as a conservative hack paid him much mind this past week. Drudge radio aired one of the first interviews with the Corpus Christi publication that broke the Cheney shooting story, and he hasn’t let up on Big Dick just yet…

Jessica, Jessica, Jessica. On this slushy Valentine’s Day, where, face it, you really don’t want to venture out of the Gawker office, it’s time for a little tête-à-tête with you about your devotion to Matt Drudge.

O Jessica, as you kick through snow drifts on the mean streets of Manhattan, as you huddle on the subway platform with a thousand other wise guys with the same idea about coming out of the cold, do you imagine yourself on an island in Miami Beach, rubbing socks with the man who runs the most dangerous newsroom in America, gazing longingly at the best male lips in cyberspace? Do you imagine exchanging little love IMs, even though your computers are right next to one another, and actually – I know this is hard, Jess – getting an IM back?

Okay. So. What is this Drudge obsession? I mean, is he that dis-worthy? That newsworthy? What’s with this Matt Drudge Ignores Me Again pigtail-in-the-inkwell?

O Gawkette, I see a Rorschach pattern in this running gag. As Matt Drudge ignores you, you ignore a piece of yourself.

I’m a Drudge scholar. What’s your excuse?

Jessica, I give him to you. I can’t deal with a guy who parks his seat in front of a keyboard 10 to 14 hours a day. And I sure as hell won’t be seen in public with someone who wears a tux-fedora ensemble at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. No, Jess, you are Matt’s bashert. The jig is up. It’s time to swallow your pride and confront your destiny.

See, I’m protective of him. I understand where he’s coming from. I analyze the philosophical implications of his actions, criticize him when he deserves it, but, well, shucks, Jess, I have his best interests at heart. I’m Matt’s gadfly, his apologist. (And I also know when a Gawker Stalker Drudge sighting is a false alarm.) But you, Jess, have another role. You’re his arm candy.

And as you know, Gawkette, the way to a man’s heart is to insinuate to every other woman in America that he’s a homosexual. Come on, kids. You’ve proven to each other that you’re hard to get. You’ve done the silent treatment gig. On this momentous occasion, it’s time to bury the hatchet in a frosty cuddle puddle.

Stay, snowy Valentine, stay.

(Note: Sorry about the dated essay, but I’ve mined the data I thought lost from a disk that got misplaced when I went out of the country months ago…)

In one of Matt Drudge’s name-dropping anecdotes in Drudge Manifesto, someone asks who’ll play him in the Hollywood movie.

“Carl Bernstein,” he shoots back.

Now that the last Watergate mine has been stripped, even Drudge has grown tired of seeing Bob Woodward’s mug on the boob tube. But while Deep Throat is as old as yesterday’s lunch, Matt is indebted to them in more ways than one – sometimes he seemed to fancy himself a modern day successor to Woodward and Bernstein. He can argue till the cows come home on the parallels between Watergate and Lewinskygate, and while Bessie and her calves are navigating their way back, we can debate on whether there is any real civic obligation to expose Bill Clinton’s sexual scruples. But I think one media lesson that can be learned from this is that the fear of risking one’s career can obstruct a lot of important investigative journalism. However you feel about Drudge or the Clinton scandal, part of Matt’s ability to break stories is in an absence of liability. Matt has nothing to lose. He doesn’t have the educational credentials to break into mainstream journalism, anyway, and if his attitude is the same as it is in his interview with the Washington City Paper a few years ago, he doesn’t feel he even deeded that barely-gained high school diploma. He doesn’t like bureaucracy, nor is he into playing by the rules. If it weren’t for the advent of the Internet, he might still be working in the CBS gift shop – until the wrong person caught him looting confidential data from executive suite trashcans. When you’re not part of an industry, you don’t have to answer to anyone.

We want to think that investigative journalists are like Woodward and Bernstein – virtuous, hardworking journalistic drones, each a cross between Cinderella and Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit out of J.R.R. Tolkein. All they needed is a mysterious insider to sprinkle stardust on them or bulldoze them into an adventure thorough Middle Earth.

Even if Matt Drudge bought into the Deep Throat legend himself, the truth is that he doesn’t need to be a Bob or Carl. He’s more useful as he is, where he is – an untethered, free agent who has nothing to lose because he doesn’t have it, anyway. Good. That’s how I like it. Citizen journalists are another voice, not just unfiltered, but unchecked. Another news source with a separate package of pros and cons.