More Matt Drudge..

The international man of mystery.

NY Magazine has a interesting detailed piece on Matt, although they didn't get to interview him because he is obsessive about his privacy. I find him fascinating because he opened up this whole new world of blogging and blending the news with everyday man's opinion. But you don't have to read the long article. I did that for you. Here are the good parts:

"The Drudge Report is an institution, the seventh-most-visited news Website, ahead of the New York Times, Fox News, and the Washington Post. Getting linked on Drudge can unleash a tsunami of public mentions and e-mails, and journalists cater to Drudge to gain those links, alerting him when their stories have nasty anecdotes."

And of course the big green eyed monster raises it's ugly head:

“He is the center of personality-obsessed, attack-based politics. That is the content Drudge looks for,” Glenn Greenwald says. “He’s a right-wing hack.” Greenwald is a leader among the phalanx of left-wing Internet groups and voices, from Salon to Media Matters to Talking Points Memo"

But Drudge seems to believe that Hillary will be our next President:

“That House is going pink,” says Drudge."

What is Drudge like personally? Ohh... the mystery. But usually if your enemy has something nice to say about you, that is, at least, a bit of who you are:

"Donna Brazile describes her first meeting with the Webmaster: “What I remember is the graciousness of a Southern gentleman in him."

The author of the article paints a picture of a sad troubled childhood filled with parental rejection. I'm not talking just a nasty divorce. There was mental illness of a creative powerful woman, a father who was more interested in his new family than a strange son, and then being sent away. Then the turning point:

"After high school, the boy tried New York and Europe, then drifted to his father’s hometown, Los Angeles, where he worked for years in the gift shop at CBS studios. Worried about his son’s aimlessness, Bob Drudge insisted on buying him a Packard-Bell computer in 1994. The Drudge Report began as an e-mail sent out to a few friends."

Then came the moment of fame:

"Drudge filed a breathless report claiming that Newsweek had, that week, held a story reporting that Bill Clinton had had a sexual affair with a 23-year-old White House intern."

Could Drudge have seen how the Clintons would change his life? Even today it seems the Clintons will continue bankroll Drudge's life:

"Drudge said, “I need Hillary Clinton. You don’t get it. I need to be part of her world. That’s my bank. Like Leo DiCaprio has the environment and Al Gore has the environment and Jimmy Carter has anti-Americanism … I have Hillary.”

But what good NY Magazine article on anyone with even the whiff of rightwing about them, be without an outing?:

"Sheff’s metaphor touches on the left’s assertion that Drudge is gay and closeted. In high school, Drudge was already in a gay scene, dating men, Jeannette Walls reported in Dish. And in his memoir, Blinded by the Right, conservative-turned-liberal David Brock, who is gay, described Drudge coming on to him sexually in 1997, including e-mailing Brock the suggestion that they be “f*ck buddies.” Michaelangelo Signorile, a journalist who has broken down many a closet door, calls Drudge “a nasty faggot.”

Isn't that sweet? You have to love the loyalty and decency of "friends" like Brock, don't you? My question is, why does it matter? Why is Drudge's sexuality even an issue or even interesting? He isn't a politican. And no matter what they say, he links negative rightwing stuff as often as he does leftwing. He isn't registered with any party and he doesn't even vote.

What Drudge does is take what is interesting and show it to us. The stuff that the media wouldn't even look at. The $400 haircut of Edwards, the swift boat veterans attack on Kerry, and of course what was obviously boring and should have been of no concern to us, Newsweek's blocked story of a young woman named Monica and the President of the United States.

His magic is knowing what we want to know.

h/t BigDog