I hope everyone’s watching as Matt Drudge tries frantically to keep the Kerry-“intern” non-story alive despite the fact that just about everybody, conservative and liberal alike, has concluded there’s nothing to see here.
Yesterday he had no fewer than seven links to stories that touched on the scandalette, not a single one offering evidence that would make it credible. One or two were to his own articles, which bear his usual signature when he is trying to fan the flames of scandal — breathless accusations punctuated with exclamation points! Unnamed “sources” and absolutely unsupported innuendo! Today he’s at it again, though there are only four links to the “intern” nonstory because nobody’s falling for Drudge’s tricks this time.
Today, Atrios has quite an amazing post on how Larry Flynt is claiming he has proof that President Bush paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. He wonders why, with Drudge’s and Flynt’s respective track records, the Drudge rumor got so much more media attention than the Flynt rumor.
I’d also like the media to consider one thing – compare Flynt’s batting average with Drudge’s. While the media will jump to condemn Flynt, they should recognize that Flynt has higher journalistic standards than any of them for this kind of thing. He doesn’t run with things until he has multiple sources. This story may or may not be true, but frankly I have a lot more faith in the accuracy of Flynt’s reporting than I do in a lot of the mainstream press. The recent week has only re-confirmed that.
Let’s remember that Drudge first became a celebrity not because of Monica, but because he falsely accused Sidney Blumenthal of beating his wife. And the media sided with Drudge.
I don’t know anything about the Flynt story so I won’t say a word. But I think Atrios’ point is a valid one: Drudge has enormous power that is not deserved. He is not a muckracker, he is a partisan, scruple-less shit-stirrer and that he managed to throw the media into a tumult over this indicates that something is badly amiss.
To most of the media’s credit, few if any of them ran with the story and wrote about it the way Drudge would have liked. But they did write it up, most often quoting the young lady saying the claim was nonsense. But if it weren’t for Drudge, there would have been no mention of it at all — and there shouldn’t have been. And now, everyone has that little thought implanted in their brains: John Kerry may have had sex with an intern.
On the bright side, it appears Drudge has been hoisted on his own petard. Right now, he looks a bit tragic, trying to puff air into a balloon with a hundred pinpricks in it. If this ruins his credibility for good, at least something positive may have come out of it.
1
By Kevin Kim
I’m pretty cynical about politicians and politics in general, which is why I’ve now drawn a cartoon of Kerry banging a sheep.
Expect something on Bush pretty soon.
Kevin
February 18, 2004 @ 2:01 pm | Comment
2
By Zhang Li En
Sorry for my ignorance, but are we talking about the Drudge who does http://www.drudgereport.com? I went there and had a (very) brief look … but in the main headlines, the only story I could see was one whose headline was a denial by some girl that there was any truth to it. I didn’t follow the link. Is this the website you’re referring to?
February 18, 2004 @ 2:36 pm | Comment
3
By richard
Yes, Li En. There are now 2 links replaced, and a nice big photo he had of the young lady is also replaced, now with a Daily News cover shot. There are still four links (including the Daily News), but now they all contradict what he had up there beore. Now they are all about the girl’s denial, and her family’s. I think he knows he’s screwed up. If you had seen what he had there earlier, especially his own piece with all the !!! Unfortunately, I don’t have links to all the separate breathless little articles he’s had up there about Kerry, but much of America has seen them already.
February 18, 2004 @ 2:58 pm | Comment
4
By richard
Li En, here’s one link you can go to to see what I mean. (“Rivals predict ruin”)
February 18, 2004 @ 3:01 pm | Comment
5
By Conrad
So Richard, you manage to denounce salacious rumor mongering by Drudge and, in the very same friggin’ post, spread salacious rumor mongering by Flynt.
Bravo!
February 18, 2004 @ 5:33 pm | Comment
6
By richard
Conrad, I thought you might say that. No, I am not spreading the rumor. The rumor is out there, already in the NY Daily News! And I said I refuse to comment on it. I am saying that Atrios has a point about the way the media is responding to a claim by Drudge and a claim by Flynt, although when it comes to research and honesty Flynt scores way higher.
February 18, 2004 @ 5:47 pm | Comment
7
By richard
And you know something, Conrad? I also posted about Matt Drudge’s articles on Kerry the day they came out. Am I guilty of spreading the rumor? In both instances, I said I needed to wait for further proof before passing judgment. But by then the genie was well out of the bottle and nothing said by me — a puny blogger in Singapore — was going to help spread or halt the rumor mongering.
February 18, 2004 @ 6:15 pm | Comment
8
By vaara
Fair is fair, Conrad. I seem to remember that you jumped on the bogus Kerry/intern story, um, pretty much immediately after Drudge “broke” it. And not in a “look what the media is doing now” sort of way, either, but rather in a “look what a horrible person Kerry is” sort of way.
February 18, 2004 @ 6:56 pm | Comment
9
By Conrad
Indeed I did link to it Vaara I like the politics of personal dustruction as much as the next guy. What’s your point?
February 18, 2004 @ 7:38 pm | Comment
10
By vaara
Context is everything. Did Richard quote Atrios quoting Flynt as a way of slamming Bush? He did not. He was merely trying to illustrate a point about the media’s increasing tendency to repeat tabloid gossip-mongering as publishable fact.
Now, if Richard had prefaced his post with a blaring headline reading “BUSH PAID FOR AN ILLEGAL ABORTION!” then he’d be just as guilty, and hypocritical, as you say he is. But that wasn’t the context of his mentioning the Atrios article.
February 18, 2004 @ 7:56 pm | Comment
11
By jeremy
Well, I would feel a lot more comfortable with Drudge’s postings and breaking news if he could just be honest with himself.
Such as his hot date with Alec Baldwin: http://www.hypocrites.com/article9261.html
February 19, 2004 @ 4:52 am | Comment
12
By richard
Jeremy, thanks for that link! I’d forgotten all about it.
Conrad, Vaara said it much better than I could in his last post. I referred to an article in the NY Daily News and compared its impact to the Drudge-generated “intern scandalette.” I said I had no idea whether the story was true. I hope you don’t honestly see that as somehow comparable to Matt Drudge sensationalizing a total rumor and shouting in his headline that Kerry’s career may be ruined.
February 19, 2004 @ 8:44 am | Comment
13
By Conrad
I think that you engaged in a bit of minor hypocricy. I also think that you and Vaara are being ideologically self-serving in your respective justifications. If what Drdge did was sleazy, then so is what Atrios is doing. By repeating it on your site, you are spreading the rumor further.
By way of illustration only, the claim that you were not endorsing the rumor, but merely pointing out its existence, would not be a successful legal defence to a liable action.
Let me give you another example from current events. There is a Korean actress who is in deep hot water for exploiting nude photos taken of WWII “comfort women”. Were I to write a post on my site, condemning exploitation, and include copies some of those images claiming that I am merely showing what the controversy is about — I would be engaging in the same exploitation as the Korean actress.
Same principle here.
February 19, 2004 @ 1:09 pm | Comment
14
By richard
I see your point Conrad, but I view it differently. The Flynt story is out in a mass medium, and I said so, adding I know nothing about the details and can’t endorse it as truth. Today, I point out Drudge’s links to the Kerry “intern” nonstory, which I see as examples of rumor-mongering. Does that make me a partner in crime and a rumor-spreader myself? After all, I’m passing along Drudge’s sludge. But I think the answer is no — I am making a point about what Drudge is up to, not whether Kerry did or didn’t commit adultery. The same applies to my link to the Flynt story. It was comment on how our media work, on how a Flynt rumor travels through the media compared to a Drudge rumor.
So I think my citation of the Atrios story is valid and fair (make that “fair and balanced”). Do I feel a touch of schadenfreude over the Flynt allegations? Maybe, because after watching Kerry get crucified in the blogosphere last week over alleged personal improprieties here was an opportunity to show that we are all human and we all have skeletons in our closet, even our brave and feckless leader GWB. But i don’t see myself as spreading any rumor, especially one that’s already covered in the NY Daily News!
February 19, 2004 @ 2:15 pm | Comment
15
By The Gweilo Diaries
Depends Upon Whose Ox is Being Gored?
Mark Kleiman is opposed to rumor mongering . . . . except when he’s doing it. Still, Kleiman is a piker compared to my good friend Richard at Peking Duck, who manages to commit his hypocrisy in a single post….
February 19, 2004 @ 6:17 pm | Comment
16
By Joseph Bosco
Uh, folks…
I’m continuing to have tech problems, so I’ve been AWOL for most of this spat. But if this machine won’t crash for just a moment, I want to say that all of us must rise above the temptation to score a point for “our” guy–whichever one that is individually–with this trash.
There is enough real ammunition for both sides–left and right–in this fight, we don’t need SEX. Now, revisionist theories about the Vietnam War and America’s “Cultural Revolution” so neatly embodied in the match that appears slated, is another story. There we have enough intellectual fodder for us to hammer one another for months without ever discussing infidelity. I don’t know about y’all, but I have a few skeletons in that area of my life, so I get kind of nervous “banging” that family values issue around.
Just a thought…please don’t shoot my way. I’ve got too many RSS Feed and Blogger-crash problems to defend myself.
Joseph
February 20, 2004 @ 12:06 am | Comment
17
By The Conjecturer
Moby-ize Your Politik!
Larry Flynt, everyone’s favorite Hustler, has been paying attention to Moby:”This story has got to come out,” the wheelchair-bound Hustler magazine honcho told the Daily News’ Corky Siemaszko. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the White House about this w…
April 14, 2004 @ 8:41 am | Comment
18
By NewInfo
After reading the new Salon article on the Bush abortion, I have read various online articles on the issue. I didn’t know that the woman’s name was known. I’ve followed up with some rudimentary research of my own. While some Web sites propagate the idea that Bush impregnated a 15 year old girl, Robin Lowman Garner was in fact born in or around 1947, so she was only about a year younger than Bush, who was born in 1946. (She’s said to be 57 now.)
The husband of Robin Garner, Jerry Lee Garner, is also 57. They appear to have at least one child, Jerry Lee Garner, Jr., 28 years old, born about 1976, five years after the abortion.
One Web site said the couple live in San Antonio, but databases list them as living in Bourne, TX, (northwest of San Antonio) and Corpus Christi, TX. So they presumably live in Bourne and have a vacation house in Corpus Christi. Larry Flynt referred to the woman living today in Corpus Christi in a house worth half a million dollars. Whether she lives in one such house, or two, it’s a little difficult to believe that the woman jumped from working as a cocktail waitress to living in fancy real estate simply on the salary of an FBI agent such as her husband.
July 15, 2004 @ 1:14 pm | Comment
19
By richard
Do you have the link for the article? I can’t locate it.
July 16, 2004 @ 2:03 pm | Comment
20
By salcia-co
http://salcia-co.net
June 21, 2005 @ 5:24 pm | Comment