Matt Pudge has SPAWNED and named it "The Politico" (Mike ALLEN)

[UTUSN]

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/27/politico/index.html

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday March 27, 2007 08:41 EST

Drudge and the Politico -- poisonously joined at the hip

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)

The new online political magazine, The Politico, is a pernicious new presence in our media landscape. As I noted the other day, it really is nothing more than the Drudge Report dressed up with the trappings of mainstream media credibility. Today, Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News writes on his blog about what is merely the latest episode (of many) proving how closely coordinated The Politico is with The Drudge Report. It is not hyperbole to say that the former is all but an arm of the latter.

Last night, The Politico's Mike Allen published a petty, trite hit piece on Barack Obama -- entitled Rookie Mistakes Plague Obama -- claiming that Obama "has also shown a tendency toward seemingly minor contradictions and rhetorical slips" and referencing "imprecise or incomplete statements by Obama over the years." As Bunch noticed, Allen's story was "highlighted on the Drudge Report no later than 18 minutes after it was filed by Allen (how does he do it!)." Drudge continues prominently to promote The Politico's story today:

As I noted earlier this week, The Politico has instantaneously become one of the most-linked sites (I would guess the single most-linked) on The Drudge Report. Drudge links produce a volume of traffic unlike any other. Central to the business and political plan of The Politico is, quite transparently, overt courting of Matt Drudge and active cooperation with him. ....

Allen, who was Time's White House correspondent before joining The Politico, has a relationship with the White House and with George Bush so affable that the President actually went out of his way at a recent Press Conference deliberately to plug The Politico while exchanging in giggly chatter with Allen. While at Time, Allen was typically in the forefront of the most predictable, petty and baseless Beltway smears. As but one amazing example, The Politico this week published an article -- precisely echoing Matt Drudge's headlined theme that the House was in "disarray" -- proclaiming in the first sentence that "Nancy Pelosi's honeymoon is over." ....

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[Lasher]

1. I just went to the Politico website

Now I feel....soiled. Unclean. Time for a long shower.

[blogslut]

2. yep

n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

3. thank you very much for this. I think media matters did a piece on this

execrable, fascist enabling swillpot

Mike Allen is among the worst toadies extant, right up there with Adam Nagourney in terms of slimy unctuousness

have you ever read Matt Taibbi's Wimblehack?

it might help clear your palate after dealing with Politico/Drudge

Taibbi goes after the worst of the hack media big names, couching the series of articles, written in 04, in terms of a tennis tournament, pitting worst against worst, until the very worst journalist of all is left standing

well worth a read

[qanda]

4. CNN used them to break the news about Elizabeth Edwards

And they were so wrong.

[Bukowski Fan]

5. I'm not totally "hip" to the "blogosphere"

(man, I hate that word) but after reading a few articles from it, I started to think to myself, ya know, this sounds a lot like the sensationalist, over-hyped trite I've read at Drudge. This sure does explain a lot.