He's a laughingstock right now



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From: Gary Garland
Re: Drudge's Supposed Fox Feud
Date: Nov. 17, 1999

Dear Editors:

First, let me complement you on Tamara Baker's article comparing the G. W. Bush campaign to The Truman Show. The GOP really knows how to play those show biz angles: Reagan was the Being There president, Bush was the Vision Quest president, and now his son is a Jim Carrey character.

I love it!

I'm writing you, though, because I am really of two minds about the conflict between perpetual high school sophomore Matt Drudge and his employers at Fox.

First of all, nobody is watching the thing (160,000 households is pretty pathetic).

And now Roger Ailes is criticizing Drudge as having "no [journalistic] standards."

That's pretty funny, coming from Fox, which no doubt has a pinup of über-shrew Barbara Olson on its newsroom wall.

Thus, I think that there may be one of three possibilities:

one, his gross emotional immaturity coupled with being humored by the jihad wing of the GOP has made him think that he is much more important than he really is;
two, he wants to leave Fox in a hail of verbal bullets in an inane attempt to make himself out to be some kind of media outlaw, a pose that he attempted (laughably) to use before Fox put his deformed puss on the air;
three, Fox is trying to make Drudge out to be an outlaw, too, in an attempt to boost his flagging ratings and to appeal to the anti-media-establishment "woo-woo" segment of the population. Then, this will all be patched up and Drudge will come out of it looking like he is a tough "impartial arbiter" of the news and Fox will pat itself on the back for being able to have such rollicking "dissent" and still be able to work with someone they had that "conflict" with.

Now I think the most likely choice is a combination of numbers one and two. But something really smells about this sudden disagreement. Is this just a lot of posturing, or is the falling out between Ailes and Drudge genuine?

You decide.

Incidentally, speaking of über-shrews, Victoria Toensing got the judge overseeing the Gingrich divorce proceedings to compel the Newtster to answer all the questions he refused to last week. To pervert DeToqueville a bit (since Newt was so fond of quoting the frenchman), may that make his leisure even more disgraceful.

This is going to be fun!