alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

March 27, 2007

If It Walks Like a Drudge, and Quacks Like a Drudge…

by AltHippo @ 1:26 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

I know there’s some people who are going to be confused by the lede of today’s Glenn Greenwald post:

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.

As a close observer of inside-the-beltway-grassroots politics (let’s just coin a new term and call them “beltroots”) I can tell you this is going to rub some people the wrong way.

First, the beltroots don’t look at Politico as rightwing. Looking at the comments on the site I’d have to conclude that the VRWC pwns Poltico, but I can tell you anecdotally that others disagree. Second, while the beltroots would agree that the Drudge Report is a scandal sheet, they would dispute the notion of any coordination between Drudge and the Republican party. To put it more generally, even reasonably well-read people here in our fair city think that the notion of a Republican Noise Machine (RNM) is hyperbolic figure of speech.

While I can’t stalk the wild arbusto in a single blog post, I can explain why I believe that Drudge coordinates with the RNC: because the RNC has admitted as much in the Washington Post:

At the Republican National Committee, leaking items to the Drudge Report is an official part of communications strategy.

During the 2004 campaign, current and former RNC staff members said, opposition research nuggets on Kerry were almost always leaked first to the Web site. Sometimes they were trivial — such as the fact that Kerry got expensive haircuts at the Christophe salon — other times they were controversial quotes from his days as a Vietnam War protester. All together, these and other items contributed to Kerry losing control of his public image.

Ken Mehlman, the RNC chairman and head of Bush’s reelection campaign, said his operatives leaked to Drudge because it inevitably drove wider coverage, including to old media organizations: “He puts something up and they have to follow it.”

Last year, a delegation of RNC officials flew to Miami Beach, where Drudge lives, for a dinner at the Forge steakhouse to introduce the Internet maven to Matt Rhodes, the party’s new opposition research director.

Yes, Virginia there really is a Republican Noise Machine. And that’s why you should take the possibility that Politico is a slightly dressed up version of Drudge seriously.

Bookmark on del.icio.us

Leave a Reply

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image

« Fahrenheit Man on Dog
Denial is Not Just a River in Washington »

[powered by WordPress.]

hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

contact

TBA 2008

The Alternative Hypothesis

the elephants of anwr

issues and insight

capitolists

alt media

sounds

critical resources

flora and fauna

law & order

events

cinema

literati

propaganda

use with extreme caution

internal links:

categories:

search blog:

archives:

March 2007
M T W T F S S
« Feb   Apr »
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

other:

95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

comments

Recent Comments

HippoWire

  • Recent Trackbacks:

    • 27 queries. 0.489 seconds