Gillian Reagan in the New York Observer engages in the most fanciful of wishful thinking in her story, "Are the Days of Drudge Over?" Ms. Reagan's ability to ignore both the forest and the trees is really remarkable, but then the liberals she carefully selects to buttress her theory are just as bad.For instance, notice the double talk of the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman. “Matt Drudge has no influence whatsoever,” he said. “When Drudge picks up one of our stories, it’s incredible. It lights up the boards; all of a sudden, it’s the most linked-to story on the Web site.”...When his editor notes that a story has crazy traffic on The Journal’s site, Mr. Weisman shrugs. “I’m like, ‘Eh, it’s because it was linked on Drudge,’” he said.
Huh? Let me get this straight. Weisman claims that Matt Drudge has "no influence whatsoever" and then as proof admits that Drudge has, in fact, an incredible influence. This, my friends, is what counts as logical reasoning in the Fourth Estate.
Ms. Reagan writes, "In terms of looking for scoops or insider news on his own beat, Mr. Weisman looks elsewhere. 'I’ll actually go to the Huffington Post to see if they’re floating something,' he said."
There you go. Liberal newspaper hacks prefer liberal blog hacks. Their world thus remains comfortable, small, ideologically inclusive.
But it still is Matt Drudge who lights up the boards.
And yet the liberals insist that the days of Drudge are over? Or as New York Times executive editor, Bill Keller, put it, "Maybe he was just a fad, [a] digital-age hula hoop.”
Certainly Ms. Reagan and her liberal media friends hope that Matt Drudge will go the way of the hula hoop. But wishing it (no matter how fervent the desire) won't make it so...not when the wish is so starkly contrary to the way things actually are. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
Soft soap the liberal media definitely knows about. But, if they're not careful, they're going to become miserably acquainted with despair as well.