Imagine, if you would, a world where all the pertinent news of the day could be had with one click of a mouse. As free from corporate or political bias as could be found anywhere, there used to be a place where the purveyors of the Internet could find breaking news and special interest stories in a singular location, always up to date, always relevant. Compared to all other news sources – NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN – this source towered high above the rest with it’s up-to-the-second updates and its absolute might to influence the powerful and well connected.
For me, this was a year ago.
The Drudge Report, for as long as I can remember, had been the best and most reliable source for all things NEWS since my dial up modem first logged me on to AOL in 1999. Throughout the Bush Administration, whenever and wherever news broke, Drudge was there – and he was there first. Even before that, before I ever cared about the news, Drudge was breaking stories that the established and “mainstream media” were afraid to publish. It seemed that Drudge refused to take any prisoners on either side of the political debate. He called out George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as the Iraq War deteriorated, berated and ran embarrassing stories about John Kerry during the ’04 election. He was there when ‘Dubya’s approval ratings fell below Richard Nixon’s and approached Harry Truman. He was there when Hillary tried out a fake southern accent in Kentucky and perpetuated speculation that, on several occasions, John McCain’s skin cancer may have returned. Also, he was extremely fair to Barack Obama during the election when he could have easily assailed him for his connections with Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, or any other of the Right’s bogeymen of the day. And even though it was claimed by both sides that he was out to defame and deface them, I never saw it.
That was then.
Since, the ’08 election Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report has quickly become the center of the universe for all things anti-Obama. As soon as the election was over, Drudge was all over a fall in the stock market (in the middle of an economic crisis) and labeled it “Obama Anxiety.” When ridiculous terms like Marxism, communism, and socialism were first thrown around, Drudge was all too eager to throw them up as headlines – often in red type and under a spinning siren. The Obama bailouts of banks were assaulted while George W. Bush largely got a pass. Also, Drudge was an instrumental part in ginning up the fervor of the incendiary town halls and the TEA parties (which were attended by “regular, everyday Americans” who were “Republicans, Democrats, and Independents” – right). All of this leaves out Drudge’s constant validation of the “death panel” uproar while completely ignoring the facts of the health care bills in Congress, often running stories detailing the shortcomings of the Canadian and British systems – while nothing close to either system is being proposed here in the U.S.
Needless to say, up to this point, The Drudge Report and I were drifting further apart. Why was this man leading me astray? Why would he abandon the seemingly fair news coverage for both sides of the debate that I had grown accustomed to? Why was he doing this?
The last straw for me came recently. Once Chicago lost out on the Olympics it was unforgivable. In the International Olympic Committee’s vote for which city would ultimately host the games, Chicago was unexpectedly voted out in the first round. What came next was just short of an outright celebration. The entire American Right simultaneously threw their hands in the air and cried out in sheer joy and the President’s failure. How powerless he is! Obama couldn’t even bring the games to the U.S. in all his power and glory! All of the sudden everyone in the media who had made their living criticizing the left in this country became Rio de Janeiro’s biggest supporter.
And you know who lead the charge.
THE EGO HAS LANDED. THE WORLD REJECTS OBAMA: CHICAGO OUT IN FIRST ROUND
Suddenly, the IOC constituted the will of the world and anything Obama wants and doesn’t get is immediately interpreted as a stunning display of weakness and failure. And this wasn’t Drudge’s first overt attempt to undermine Chicago’s Olympic bid. In the run-up to the IOC vote, Drudge injected several stories into the media cycle that painted Chicago as nothing short of a Mad Max war zone. Most notably was the innocent bystander beaten to death by gang-bangers with railroad ties. Drudge also repeatedly put his own labels on fishy Chicago political stories, leading them with the derogatory term “CHICAGOLAND.” Never have I seen a “news outfit” so openly look to sabotage and embarrass their own country.
Drudge has now even made a switch in his favorite web portal motivated solely by politics and cronyism. Instead of linking to news stories published by the non-partisan MyWay news portal, which he did for years, Drudge instead made the switch to widely documented and celebrated conservative cheerleader Andrew Beitbart. So, now things that should be straight-up-and down news stories are sure to have their own form of spin to them, as well.
With that, me and Drudge broke up. I’ll always love him, I’ll check in regularly, but it won’t be the same. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe he was always this biased and I never noticed it. I know he was always accused of being such. I know he’s publicly come out as a conservative and libertarian. I know all these things. But just knowing that there isn’t that wonderful oasis of news, free from all the influence that most other news agencies seem to cave to these days, makes me feel a little empty inside.
