The downfall of Matt Drudge

Image by ario_j via Flickr

Common wisdom in Washington holds that Matt Drudge–proprietor of the Drudgereport.com–has immense sway over the news cycle. What he posts to his bare bones site immediately ricochets around the Internet, then migrates to the cable channels, before sneaking its way into the newspapers and news weeklies. This phenomenon has frustrated liberals and Democrats to no end, because Drudge’s politics are uniformly conservative and often Republican-friendly. “Matt Drudge rules our world,” John Halperin and John Harris, both huge machers in the DC press scene, wrote back in 2006. Their observation was accurate then. But it’s not anymore.

In Obama’s Washington, the common wisdom about Drudge has been made false. He just doesn’t drive the news cycle like he used to. Yesterday, for instance, his site trumpeted an anodyne statement from Nancy Pelosi as evidence of the Speaker’s plans to use environmentalism to become a “Big Brother” figure–or, I guess, a Big Sister. Take a look here, in the very useful Drudge Report archives. “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to inventory!” said Pelosi. Scary! I guess…

But then follow the link. Drudge elided the actual Pelosi quote, which, in full, reads: “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory … of how we are taking responsibility.” [emphasis added] Think about that for a moment. All Pelosi was saying that, in the battle to contain climate change, we’ll have to take responsibility for our everday lives. What’s striking about the statement is not so much its harmlesness, and indeed its obviousness, but the conservative bent it reveals. Encouraging people to take responsibility for their everyday, individual lives has been a Republican trope for as long as I’ve been alive. Yet here’s a Democrat doing it, and Drudge–the id of the mainstream media’s rightward tilt–flips out.

In a real sign o’ the times, however, this story went nowhere. No one picked it up–not the cable shoutfests, and certainly not the print press. And as far as I can tell, no one on The Corner picked it up, either. There’s a lesson here. With an economic crisis of historic proportions, two difficult wars and a possible third on the horizon, the media has less time for such petty–almost willful–stupidity. Furthermore, to judge by election results, the public has clearly moved left, and the press has to follow.

Perhaps all that is too much to hope. Perhaps it was just a botched story, a discrete failure on Drudge’s part. But it seems clear to me that, no matter what, Matt Drudge no longer rules anyone’s world.