Ron Reagan's Comments

[Cablemender]

These are from the story on the Drudge Report website:

"The Bush Administration cannot be trusted."

"George W. Bush and his administration have taken normal mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience."

"They traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on."

"When Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos."

"Given candidate Bush's remarks, it was hard to imagine him, as president, flipping a stiff middle finger at the world and charging off adventuring in the Middle East."

"Even as of this writing, Dick Cheney clings to his mad assertion that Saddam was somehow at the nexus of a worldwide terror network."

"What followed was the usual administration strategy of stonewalling, obstruction and obfuscation."

"But image is everything in this White House, and that image of George Bush as a noble and infallible warrior in the service of his nation must be fanatically maintained, because behind the image lies*nothing?"

"He is ineloquent not because he cannot speak but because he doesn't bother to think."

"His Republican party, furthermore, seems a far cry from the current model, with its cringing obeisance to the religious Right and its kill-anything-that-moves attack instincts."

Can anyone fill me in on what "lies" he is talking about? Don't even go there with WMDs - go read his State of the Union address from that year. A lie is when you KNOW something is untrue, and pass it on as truth. Getting bad intel, as investigations have proven twice is exactly what happened, and acting on it isn't lying.

What is the stonewalling, obstruction, and obfuscation he is referring to?

The rest is so self-serving it's hardly worth commenting on.

[Richard]

On another note I seen Edwards speech and at least he did not attack, but it was no John F Kenedy speech, nor equal to Ronald Reagan in trying to inspire the nation. Of course the talking heads on the networks thought it was grand. ;D

[RetNavySuppo]

Cablemender,

Can you give us a link to that story? I went to the Drudge site and cannot find the story you are referring to. It would be interesting to read the whole article.

[Cablemender]

Sure, here is the link:

www.drudgereport.com/dnc83.htm

[Galvin]

Speaking of Drudge, one of the local (Seattle) late-night talk show hosts (Mike Webb), in addition to being ultra-liberal, is openly gay. He really got going on the subject of Matt Drudge the other night and said he was totally disgusted with Drudge because of what he claimed was a rabid anti-gay bias in his writing that he claims is an attempt by Drudge to cover up the fact that he himself is gay.

His main disgust springs from the fact (he claims it as fact anyway) that Matt Drudge is well known to be a homosexual within the gay community but has never outed himself to his readership. Sounds a little like a repeat of the J. Edgar Hoover saga if this be true.

I assume that a person operatimg within the gay community might have a little more info on who is and who isn't than those of us on the outside. I also believe Webb would be in serious danger of being slapped with a libel suit or worse for outing him if it wasn't true so I have little reason not to believe him.

[Richard]

Galvan, thanks for that bit of info, but it makes no difference to me if Druge or any one else is gay or not. Living in a closet doesn't seem like a good place to live, but I guess some people like it ;D I have never heard Druge but most of these radio personalities have to stir up something each day to keep their rateings up in order to stay on the air. I don't think Ron Reagan has a brain in his head anyway, and is just using the Reagan name for with out it he would be just a average joe who no one would pay attention too.

[Cablemender]

I'm trying to remember any story on Drudge that was in any way anti-gay, and I can't remember one. There might well have been some, I just can't remember one and I usually check his site once or more a day.

I don't see why Mr. Webb would have a problem with the way Drudge, if the allegation is true, conducts himself. I didn't think there was a requirement for gays to live openly in their lifestyle; I thought it was an individual right to live how they chose, just like everyone else.

As to libel, I thought the person claiming it has to prove they were damaged in some way in order to pursue such a case. That's why O'Reilly didn't go after Al Franken when he used O'Reilly's picture on the cover of his book "Liars, and the Lying.." O'Reilly has the top show on cable TV, and he's in the top 10 on talk radio.. kind of hard to have that and claim you are professionally "damaged" by someone's book. I would assume Drudge is in the same boat; can't show damage when your site is getting a gazillion hits a day.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Heh, well like most of the major minority coalitions, if you don't follow the official line lockstep , you must be punished. Like Cheyne's daughter who was attacked for not criticizing and condemning her father publicly.

So if Drudge is gay, they are getting even because he won't use his notoriety to promote their "lifestyle" by outing him.

[Cablemender]

I had a few minutes to kill today so I went to Drudge's site and did a search there for "gay" and browsed through a few stories there. There appear to be a good number of them, and from what I could see they aren't Drudge's work, they are merely links to the reports of other news outlets and papers across the US, Canada, and Britain. There is hardly any words there attributable to Drudge.

Was Webb talking about his radio show, maybe? I've never heard Drudge on the air except as someone else's guest, so I have no idea of his views as to gays on his radio show.

[Ricfly52]

Uh this is sorta on the subject. If a person is a heterosexual, and does not proclaim that preference to the world, does it mean he is living in "the closet"?
Man my closet is so small I just don't know if I can do that! ;D ;D ;D

[Galvin]

I am not making any judgements about Drudge's alleged gay-bashing on his website or any radio show he may have. I am merely reporting what I heard on Mike Webb's show because I was rather surprised to find out that Drudge is gay, if indeed he is.

Webb's comment on the air was that "he is as gay as a goose" and that the fact was well know among gays, if not the general public. The outing of one gay by another is often done out of spite but I have no inside info to back up Webb's assertions nor to I presume to know his motive in outing him. If Drudge is not gay then it would seem to me that such an accusation might be actionable if a demonstrable loss of his readership occurs.

The opinion that Drudge uses a hard line on gays to pander to his readership, which tends to be more from the right, and to cover up his own preferences is Webb's, not mine. I don't know enough about it to make a detailed assessment, I'm just repeating what I happened to hear.

Given the opposition to same sex marriage and all the anti-gay rhetoric that has been posted in the predecessor forum to this one, I found it interesting that someone whose information is so often cited by some who have engaged in same would turn out to be gay. The reason I find it interesting is, if the story is true and gains legs enough that Drudge is then universally "outed", I wonder if it will affect his readership and his report's popularity with his present demographic.

In plan language, I wonder if it caused him to lose a portion of his base clientel he would then go after Webb legally as a result. Would Webb be liable for his saying something that turned out to be true if it wound up quantifiably harming the work of the person he said it about?

BTW: Since a previous poster brought up questions of "being in the closet", to clear up any possible misconceptions I will "out" myself right here and now.

I am a flaming heterosexual and have never made a secret about my abnormally strong attraction to the opposite sex.

"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
Sigmund Freud about the Irish

[Cablemender]

Interesting point to ponder, whether or not Drudge's readership would fall off if he is indeed gay AND outed.
I suspect with the anonymity associated with the internet that it wouldn't happen. Even if someone was hard-core enough to boycott him only for that, I'd think that would be such a small minority it'd hardly be noticed. If the guy has the breaking story, he has it, and it doesn't really matter what his proclivity is.

Many people of all walks of life and pursuations buy Elton John's recordings, for example. I've never heard him banned from a radio station because of his lifestyle.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Yeah, but Elton John isn't a conservative commentator and his lifestyle wouldn't effect his livelihood as it would Drudge.

Interesting question of legal liability, but at this point its premature and irrelevant to him being the source of any info that was used by some posters isn't it?