This little vignette from Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook today (I can’t find it in the Ben Smith article he cites) — Matt Drudge attended Hillary Clinton’s Saturday campaign-closing event at the National Building Museum, “Fedora-free, no less. And a gracious guest.”
Drudge had damn well better be grateful to Hillary Clinton as well as gracious — without the Clintons, who would he be? Breaking the news about the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair created his website as a significant media entity, letting him ditch that convenience-store job forever, and a symbiotic relationship with Clinton-hating right-wing radio has helped sustain him since. This year, his evolving relationship with Hillary Clinton’s campaign (did she use Drudge to distribute negative stories about opponents?) has drawn notice and a certain amount of flak for both.
By now, Drudge has built a solid niche for himself, in part by acting as an online battlefield for Republican campaign operatives, and The Drudge Report no doubt will be with us for quite a while. But with the Clintons fading from the scene at least for now, how will Limbaugh and crew fill their time? Will they and their listeners be able to work up the same kind of visceral rage against Obama and a Democratic Congress that led millions of people (and the Wall Street Journal editorial board) to believe sincerely that Bill and Hillary killed Vince Foster?
Another ‘net-related nugget related to Clinton’s speech: Obama apparently watched it over the internet. Live or later? Is watching over the web somehow different from watching it on TV?
– cpd