Deleting the Drudge Report

I am a news junkie - an internet news junkie. And for almost a decade, the "Drudge Report" has been my portal to news on the World-Wide Web. It has been my first stop after booting up my computer for what seems like forever. It was the place where I first learned that an airplane had been flown into one of the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. It has often been my last stop on the Internet before going to bed.

Sure, I realized that Matt Drudge had a conservative bent, but I figured I was smart enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Offsetting the annoyance of his right-leaning headlines and relentless self-promotion were his occasional attempts at balanced reporting. I found his links to news organizations and articles from all over the world to be invaluable.

But now it is time for Mr. Drudge to go. Throughout the two-year-long primary and election campaign, it became more and more evident that he had a thing for Barack Obama, even to the extent that he appeared at times to be colluding with the Clinton campaign, something that no one could have imagined. Now that Obama has been elected, the "Drudge Report" has become nothing more than another tool of right-wing talk radio. Every headline is an attack on the President personally as well as on his policies. They range from the silly to the vicious and they are counterproductive. They are calculated to frighten the American public.

One aspect of the Obama campaign that Drudge and his conservative radio pals continue to ridicule is his message of hope. The "hope" that Obama offered me was that of a bipartisan administration. And he appeared to be living up to his promise by reaching out to Republicans immediately after being elected. What he got in return was a bite on the hand. The Republicans, having been so soundly defeated in the recent election, have apparently decided that the only way they can make any gains in the next round of congressional elections is to fight Obama tooth-and-nail. To that end they have loosed the talk radio dogs on the President, spreading fears of nationalization, socialism and communism, the buzzwords they know they can always fall back on. Instead of working with the President to get some of their agenda into his policies, they are resisting his every effort to bring this country out of its recession. They have chosen to drag the country down, so they can be perceived to be its rescuers in the future. What they are doing is unethical, amoral and dangerous. It is weakening the U. S. to the point where our enemies are rejoicing. Shame on them!

With the internet rapidly taking over from the print news media, Drudge has become a key player not in news, but in right wing politics. What he chooses to present and how he presents it on his Website is a powerful weapon. Lately, the way he has skewed the news has annoyed me to the point where I can't take it anymore. For example, after the President's recent speech to Congress, the Republicans were represented by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in their rebuttal. Jindal, who has received good reviews for eloquence in the past, simply bombed both in style and substance. It happens. Accounts in the press the next day confirmed my impression that Jindal's performance was actually rather bizarre. But there was not a word about it in the "Drudge Report," save for a link to a short piece about how a TV Network reporter had muttered the words "Oh God" as Jindal made his appearance. Oh God, indeed. Instead, Obama's speech was attacked as sparking another decline in the stock market.

It isn't Obama who is spreading the fear that has caused the Dow Jones to dip to new levels, it is you, Mr. Drudge, you and your fear-mongering talk radio attack-dog buddies. So it is time for you to go. Immediately after posting this entry, I will be deleting your Website from my favorite places in my browser. For the time being, my entry to Internet news will be the AP Headlines and Breaking News. I am sure that there is another Website that will serve my purposes. I am off to find it.