The World is His Laptop [Matt Drudge Interview]

Matt Drudge’s panama hat is the kind that cigar-sucking American newspaper men wore in the 1940s. Seeing him without it is like seeing the Statue of Liberty without her torch or Tom Wolfe without his white suit.

The internet has spawned a million sites but has created few real legends — one of whom is Drudge. That hat is part of the legend, a bit of style in the void of cyberspace.

Drudge runs one of the most influential and discussed websites in the world: the Drudge Report. It is a tabloid newspaper that you can read on the net offering up-to-the-minute news, gossip, sport and celebrity stories. It was Drudge who in 1998 published the story of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and became famous overnight.

I expected a fast talking, in-your-face, liberal-baiting American. But after two minutes in his company you realise that Drudge is a loner. He says he has come to London “to find a good Indian restaurant”. At first I thought he was being flippant but he was not: “I don’t have any friends in London. I’m here for dinner. I like to travel. I spend 30% of my time travelling.”

Whether Drudge goes to London or Budapest he spends his time doing exactly what he does back in America: sitting alone in his room before computer screens: “My home, my hotel room, my car — they’re all like a mobile news room.”

As the city sleeps Drudge works late, tracking down stories, searching dozens of news agencies, web-sites, newspapers, radio broadcasts, television channels and tip-offs in the hope that he will be the first to bag tomorrow’s headlines. “I was first to break the news about the death of Lady Diana,” he boasts. “The CNN team couldn’t get into make-up fast enough.”

Drudge and Free Republic are my two main sources of news and information on the Internet.

Mine, too. Drudge is also my home page. A lot of FReepers think Drudge is no more than a rumor-mongerer, but I deg to biffer (!). I can't remember the last time Drudge was mistaken or printed false reports; it seems to me the few times he was, way back when, he immediately acknowledged it and apologized -- a hell of a lot more than Dan Rather did!

My favorite Drudge moment, the thing that proved him to be genuine in my eyes, was when he called the Rush Limbaugh Show when Dennis Miller was hosting. Miller was (and is) pretty popular among conservatives for being one of the few recongizable guys in HWood to back Bush and make fun of Liberals. It was definitely un-cool among conservatives to knock Miller.

Drudge didn't insult Miller, he didn't call him names, he didn't state an untruth or make accusations. Instead, he pointed out that in the past Miller had been a scathing comedic satirist of conservatives and guys like Limbaugh, making merciless fun of them, and now here he was enjoying a medium that Rush had pioneered -- therefore, who should Drudge believe, the OLD Miller, or the NEW Miller?

It proved that Drudge was willing to be uncool, to ask unpopular questions of popular figures on a medium (the Limbaugh show) listened to by people he knew were potential allies but who would be pretty upset with him. Talk about guts -- Drudge had some big cojones to do this; better, he did it in a way that was truthful and without hurling insults.

Consequently, it brought some real class in Miller, who answered without anger that as a professional comedian it was his job to make fun of people, and that over the years he'd come to change his mind on a lot of issues, and told Drudge to believe the Miller he heard now.

Drudge was doing his job. A dirty job that not a lot of people have the courage to do, but Drudge does, and in so doing showed -- didn't tell, but showed -- things worth knowing about both Drudge and Miller. Drudge is an American hero of the first order.

They were mine and still are, but I also recommend:

realclearpolitics.com
nationalreview.com (corner, impromptus, TKS, beltway, and frum lins)
wesroth.com
hughhewitt.com
michellemalkin.com
humaneventsonline.com
getreligion.org
worldmagblog.com
redstate.org
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=17625 (Believe it or not, PAW has the best round-up of news and opinion from the right with very little of their leftist commentary. Apparently they think the right-leaning columnists are so wacko that their comment is unnecessary!)

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