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Well, folks, it's the classic Faustian tale: a mediocre
nobody whores out his wrinkly pink to the Devil and in turn
receives fame, riches, glory. His head gets too big, and he
starts thinking he EARNED it. From there, hubris and
downfall. And the curtain's a-closing fast on the Matt
Drudge story.
Act I: Matt Drudge is this goofy-looking guy who wears swing-dancing
clothes all the time and has disturbingly sweaty fantasies about someday being
a journalist. He makes himself a kind of lame Web site called The Drudge Report which is pretty much
just a bunch of AP reprints and links to his favorite journalists. Kinda like a
Leonardo DiCaprio fan site, without any good Titanic pictures.
Act II: Drudge gets an "exclusive" on a story about a story about
President Clinton doing the freak with White House intern Monica Lewinsky that
was killed at Newsweek (the story, not the intern). He takes the bait that his
right-wing demonic taskmasters dangle in front of him: publish this story and
fame and glory will be yours. Your dreams of "busting" an exclusive will be
fulfilled. With nary a backwards glance, he jumps in with both feet.
Act III: It works. Drudge rides high. He's asked onto all his favorite
news shows and gets to talk to his journalistic idols like Hugh Downs and Stone
Philips. New jobs roll in, including his own TV show, "Drudge," on Fox. He
talks at the National Press Club. Slimy reporters check his Web site hourly to
find more Presidential scandalmongering and leaked pornography. Rolling Stone
takes photos of Matt from a flattering angle and uses much digital image
manipulation to make him kind of not that ugly. Drudge is King of the World!
Act IV: Trouble brewing on the horizon. First, the Lewinsky story gets
thinner and thinner. Matt's no longer front-page news. THEN, impeachment
hearings start and end. There's no longer even lame, Enquirer-style
angles to this story -- Lewinsky's DEAD, DEAD, DEAD like Jacky G. His Web
site's hit count goes down precipitously. His appearances on news shows become
rarer and rarer. Unable to cope, Drudge plunges into a spiral of hubris and
self-deception. His boring, conservative rants get more and more Buchananite.
Act V: The hammer falls. Still not facing the brutal truth, Drudge
starts waving anti-abortion propaganda around on his dumb Fox show. When Fox
refuses to air a segment about fetal operations featuring a particularly gross
fetus picture, Drudge has a high dander fit and refuses to host the entire
show. AND, like any corp would do to any other no-show mouthbreathing
underachiever, Fox takes his security card and shows him the door.
What next? How does the story end? Well, things don't look good. I for one am
not sorry to see an ass-licking toadie like Drudge get a good kick in the teeth
once in a while. He played with the puppet masters, and they played him for a
fool.
The best a 9-day-wonder like Drudge can hope for is a long "Sunset Blvd"-style
senescence. It's not very likely, though, considering that he may have a hard
time supporting himself from now on -- his Web site can't be that lucrative,
and big megamediacorps don't like their little buttboys to have primadonna
attitude problems. I know for damn sure that he'll never get a job at PDJ.
So it looks like a choice between the SAD STREETS of LA and a SHIT JOB fetching
coffee and shoveling PAPER for M.D. Bon voyage, old Matt! And don't ever say
you didn't deserve it!
Check it out yourself
dunsmuir@pigdog.org
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