A few minutes of research. Drudge as influential says plenty!

[NRaleighLiberal]

It's almost bed time and I often like to poke around Wikipedia to see what I can find...since I've never gone to Drudge's web site and was pondering the origin of his "influence", I thought it was about time to learn a bit....

First, a few attributed comments and some rather shocking data:

Drudge has been called "the Walter Cronkite of his era" by Mark Halperin and John F. Harris
According to Camille Paglia, he is "the kind of bold, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling, information-oriented outsider we need far more of in this country
In 2006, TIME Magazine named Drudge one of the 100 most influential people in the world
Rutenberg stated that Nielsen/NetRatings shows that the Drudge Report gets three million unique visitors over the course of a month, or approximately one percent of the population of the United States

Now a few facts about this fellow:

In his book Drudge Manifesto, Drudge reports that he "failed his Bar Mitzvah", and graduated 341st out of a class of 355 from Northwood High School in 1984, thus giving himself, in his words, a "more than adequate curriculum vitae for a post at 7-Eleven".
In the 1980s, Drudge worked as a telemarketer for Time-Life Books.
For many years, he took odd jobs such as night counterman at a 7-Eleven convenience store, telemarketer for Time/Life books, McDonald's manager, and sales assistant at a New York City grocery store. In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, where he took up residence in a small Hollywood apartment. He took a job in the gift shop of CBS studios, eventually working his way up to manager. Here, he was apparently privy to some inside gossip, part of the inspiration for founding the Drudge Report.

What is it that is so appealing to conservatives about lazy, slack, untalented liars and slimers? I suspect that a scan of the background of Limbaugh, Hannity or O'Reilly would turn up something similar - no sign of intellect, just a willingness to be thought leaders for the right wing nutcases.

Is this Bush's most horrific legacy - the pride in being low achievers? The devaluation of intellect?

[BlooInBloo]

1. You'll learn much, much more from Greenwald...

One example: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/27/politico/

Many examples: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=site%3Asalon.com+greenwald+drudge+right+wing&num=100&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Is she spewing hatred to the mindless masses? I think not.

I also think that there is a pride in his ignorance. I see that a lot on the right - it is all about a blind belief system, in which knowledge is the enemy.

[rve300]

4. Spewing Hatred?

99.9% of the time all you can find at his website are links to other news stories with a half dozen words for a headline.
He almost never provides any editorial comment other than the stories he chooses to link. The fact is that for almost 15 years now, if you want to find out what the MSM will be talking about over the next 48 hours, check Drudge. His talent is picking stories that are going to provoke a reaction without having to inject much of his viewpoint.

[hokies]

5. Excellent analysis

:toast:

[HughMoran]

6. Sweet - we have two Drudge supporters here

Wow.

[charlie]

7. I still laugh at his first Usenet posts

back when he was Matt Nobody. He was a weirdly salacious creep.

Here's his bizarre post about the joys of "fingering" (fingering is a Unix command) a seismic server in Hawaii(?!!):

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/ca.earthquakes/browse_thread/thread/9f2f6bc2e78f2ae3/f443e80885be053a

which drew flamage from the server's admin for stupidly and needlessly wasting his bandwidth :D

This is his first-ever Usenet post:

Matt Drudge Dec 28 1994, 6:41 pm
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories
From: [e-mail] (Matt Drudge)
Date: 28 Dec 1994 21:48:51 GMT
Local: Wed, Dec 28 1994 5:48 pm
Subject: sex drenched


hello from sex drenched hollywood


Matt Drudge Dec 28 1994, 8:06 pm
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories
From: [e-mail] (Matt Drudge)
Date: 28 Dec 1994 23:31:45 GMT
Local: Wed, Dec 28 1994 7:31 pm
Subject: sex drenched


we are so sex drenched here in hollywood. 65% of us city dwellers have herpes

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.sex.stories/browse_thread/thread/1b8e5e815013b4ec/4efe3eb099b2df89

Then two days later...

Matt Drudge Dec 31 1994, 10:28 am
Newsgroups: alt.fan.madonna
From: [e-mail] (Matt Drudge)
Date: 30 Dec 1994 23:55:21 GMT
Local: Fri, Dec 30 1994 7:55 pm
Subject: for a gentleman caller

madonna's new nickname is "Honey Bear" because she squirts honey from the bear bottle up her ******
so that when her new gentleman caller goes down on her she tastes so sweet!

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.fan.madonna/browse_thread/thread/7dd571f3571c73b/fcb9dac78ee52ce