Matt Drudge, the Drudge Report, and Stoking the Facebook Fire

Look - I'll admit it - I check out the DRudge report (www.drudgereport.com) every day. Touted as a right-wing news aggregator, almost like a Republican Reddit - Drudge posts headlines often germane to issues of interest to conservatives. However, I think he is hurting his cause (although he gets hundreds of millions of unique visitors a year) and here is why. We are in the worst economic downturn in three quarters of a century. Record numbers of college graduates are having difficulty finding part-time, menial positions. So, it comes as a surprise to me that Drudge keeps posting stories all about the ridiculous, undeserved sums of money the Facebook founders are making from their IPO. I hesitate to call them "founders," since all they found was a way to rip off a pre-existing idea and through a combination of the right investors and chance, beat out rival yet earlier incarnations of social networking, least among them the one that existed at their own school. While it's not uncommon for Drudge to throw in a few headlines about pop culture or entertainers, the constant barrage of "at least 1,000 new millionaires!" headlines nestled between links about Birther stories and oil prices, filed neatly a few inches beneath links on Greece's probable default and unemployment data, is cringe-inducing, to say the least. Matt - *why* on Earth do you think people want to hear about a bunch of twentysomething douchebags making millions or billions of dollars when they are a.) smarter b.) as or more educated and c.) harder working and they can't find a full time 9-5 making $30 grand a year? I get that you make a million dollars a year from ad space so you have probably lost touch with your readers, and *everyone in America,* but it just comes across as pandering to rich people and an attempt to schmooze with people who made their money off a stolen but well-adapted idea instead of through working and creating an actual product. Stick to stories about the economy, your convenient links to Romney v. Obama polling data, and your bizarre and sexually ambiguous obsession with aging pop stars like Madonna and Donna Summer. Thanks!