Poor sad Matt Drudge lost his influence this year, forever, and no one cares about him or takes him seriously anymore. This was his headline a couple minutes ago, until he lost the question mark. Still, the inference is there: this is an illegitimate win. Matt will now probably lead not the MSM but the crazier fringes of the opposition. Not so much the ones working to formulate a new, smarter conservatism, but the ones who just retreat further and further into conspiracy theories and nuttiness. Goodbye, Matt! We'll be back as soon as hurricanes threaten Florida! [Drudge Archives]

When Matt Drudge saw the Zogby poll that put McCain up a point last night, he let out a squeal of glee. "A story I can control!" he shrieked, probably still in his The Crow Halloween costume and makeup. McCain is within the margin of error in one Zogby poll, that much is true. But on the same morning where Drudge tries to sell a McCain victory, respected National Journal Charlie Cook says that the Republican candidate can't win without divine intervention. We have to ask: could Obama really be in trouble?Drudge has to tell his story, and in this case it's that McCain slipped above Obama in what basically amounted to an afternoon and a morning of polling. As of this writing, Drudge's "reporting" consisted of this quoting this John Zogby exercise in hyperbole:

The Wall Street Journal does not, historically, endorse presidential candidates. But the newspaper has a new owner since the last election, Rupert Murdoch, who said he was considering changing that policy. It's hard to imagine the rabid right-wingers of the Journal editorial page jumping in the tank for Democratic nominee Barack Obama. But if the WSJ were to be planning an Obama endorsement, it would seem natural for conservative blogger Matt Drudge to get ahold of the news first, as he seemed to be implying in one of tonight's headlines, pictured at left. (The graphic reads "Presidential Material/Barack Obama.")

FLASH: Original Blogger is 42 Years Young.... DEVELOPING [Wikipedia]

Writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz turns 58 today. Internet muckraker Matt Drudge is 42. Financier J. Christopher Flowers turns 51. Musician Scott Weiland is 41. Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon is 50. Kelly Osbourne is 24. Director Ivan Reitman in 62. Actor John Cleese is celebrating his 69th. British author Zadie Smith is 33. And Donald Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, turns 45 today.

Politico's Ben Smith is eating a massive helping of crow from Obama supporters angry he and Matt Drudge posted the race-baiting attack falsely described by McCain supporter Ashley Todd in a most uncritical fashion. His lame apologia isn't helping the situation, and Politico GOP blogger Jonathan Martin adds noxiously that it "seems like McCain just can't catch a break." What went wrong here?Texas student Ms. Todd faked a backwards 'B' on her face and alleged a black Obama supporter had attacked her, as you no doubt know by now, causing Politico's comments section to launch into a feeding frenzy over editor Ben Smith's backpedaling. The elephant in the room is Drudge, of course, and critics are equally peeved at him. Since Todd herself has already been discarded by the media, it's time for Obama supporters and Ben Smith fans to express their anguish to the other folks who reported it as fact. In his follow-up to the story, Smith never admits he should have been more skeptical of the story and his colleague is downright depressed the girl wasn't telling the truth. As Smith puts it:

For years, one man controlled all the news: Matt Drudge, nutty conservative weather-obsessed Miami queen blogger. He "broke" the Monica Lewinsky thing, sort of, and then for nearly ten years his website drove news narratives and pushed stories to the forefront. Even as recently as the primary season, some years past his peak influence, Drudge helped destroy the Clinton campaign with relentless Obama-boosting. Then, of course, he had to switch back to being a straight-up GOP hack. We'd say he just boosted Obama because he felt McCain would beat the Illinois Senator, but the fact is, his visceral hatred for the Clintons probably drove him just as much as anything else. Since the conventions, though, he's been an embarrassment. He highlights completely misleading bullshit and can't get anyone but the dumbest of bloggers to pick up on his pet stories. As Eric Bohlert notes in Media Matters today, Drudge has become so divorced from reality that even the serious press people who've religiously trusted his instincts since the Clinton days can't square his headlines with reality. His cherry-picked poll results are plainly ridiculous, last week's Drudge-touted "McCain Comeback" never even pretended to materialize, and he's completely, completely missed, by design, the major narratives of the last month of the campaign: Palin's national meltdown, the increasingly crazed McCain rallies, and Obama's fundraising and ground advantages. Instead we get... Biden on Botox, a little ACORN, and feeble attempts at finding crazy liberals attacking McCain supporters. They all work like a charm on the Conservative Blogosphere, but back in the good old days, that was just the first step toward mainstream discussion. Now, no one gives a shit. Maybe after the election Drudge will buckle down, like Fox, and provide the voice of the embattled opposition. But a conservative crack-up and the apparent disillusion of the tacit MSM/right-wing noise machine cooperative venture is not great news for Matt. And it's a long time until the next hurricane season.

♦ The Rachel Maddow publicity machine rolls on (not that we mind, of course): According to today's Times, she's a "fresh face," MSNBC execs adore her, and her show's ratings have defied all expectations. [NYT]
♦ For reasons we will never understand, Fox & Friends is now more popular than CNN's American Morning and MSNBC's Morning Joe combined. [LAT]
♦ Sarah Palin will sit down with Brian Williams tomorrow. [TVNewser]

Drudge just linked to this video with the headline "Obama Kids Sing for Dear Leader." See how many seconds it takes you to throw up lunch! Produced by something called Sing For Change, it depicts a group of 5-12-year-olds singing a song about their favorite presidential candidate. "Light, hope, courage and love shine through these non-voting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing," reads the website. After the jump, their North Korean counterparts — they are several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts, you know — sing for their leader, and I rant briefly about What It Means.

What month is it... July? It's been weeks since someone wrote a story about how Matt Drudge is the King of All Information! Thanks, Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza, for stepping up to the plate. The populace must be periodically reminded that all the news they receive comes from a reclusive weather-obsessed weirdo in Florida, lest they get uppity. So this week The Original Blogger is responsible for that Jesse Jackson "cut Obama's nuts off" story that the kids are so into. Because yesterday evening he, uh... hyped the fact that it would be appearing on Fox later that night, after Sean Hannity announced it on the radio hours earlier and as Jackson himself released his apology to the wires. Follow? Matt Drudge is responsible for this story that was already everywhere by the time he picked it up. Of course, we're just being cynical—he's still ridiculously over-influential! But WHY?

Craig Seymour is a college professor who was living a boring little life in Washington, DC when he said, quote, "Fuck it" and became a gay stripper. And now he wrote a book about the whole thing, as strippers who are also writers are wont to do. And you'll never guess who Seymour's good "cool ass white boy" pal was back in the day. That's right, internet politigossipmonger Matt Drudge! Who loves nothing better than soap operas and Chaka Khan remixes:

Animal New York ran Matt Drudge's montage of horrifying Hillary Clinton pics through something called the Warhol Art Maker, and the result is the glorious piece of art above. Not bad, eh? Or at least, you know, something that won't haunt your nightmares for eternity, which is an improvement. Even Obama supporters might like to frame and hang this, assuming Clinton drops out as the punditocracy near-unanimously says she will soon do, to fondly remember the good old days. [Animal]

Internet gossip Matt Drudge parted with his precious, carefully-assembled hoard of scary Hillary Clinton photos in the clearest indication yet that It Is Definitely Over for the Democratic presidential candidate. Drudge gleefully culls these pics from magazines and newspapers every morning and keeps them in a scrapbook under his bed. But he knows they'll be worthless soon so he's rushed them onto the internet, probably while crying bitter tears of loss. A bunch of talking heads said last night that Clinton was done for, and even more say so in the Drudge-linked clip after the jump.

Hey, look, Matt Drudge did something nice for the entire country: He ended the Democratic primary, even though it was supposed to continue until eternity. See the picture and headline at left, which ran atop Drudge Report tonight. Drudge's link went to a video of Meet The Press anchor Tim Russert calmly explaining to America that "we now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be" and that Hillary Clinton is probably about to quit (she cancelled her TV appearances and everything!). Then David Gergen, the Bill Clinton aide turned talking head, said on CNN the election is over, partly because Chelsea looked sad during Hillary's last speech. "You could see the anguish on her face," Gergen said. "I think the Clinton people know the game is almost up." Remaining voters, politely thank your media overlords for deciding the election on your behalf. Clips of Russert and Gergen, and a bigger pic of the Drudge page, after the jump.

Earlier this year, Matt Drudge saved the life of Prince Harry, the UK's adorable ginger-haired lunkheaded Nazi ruler. Harry, you see, had been deployed to Afghanistan, where there are lots of people who'd like to blow him up. But Drudge revealed the deployment, breaking a media embargo, and then they were forced to send Harry back home, where he's more or less safe. For some reason this enrages the English. So the Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, whose name is probably spelled "Higginbobotham" but pronounced "Higgins", has demanded an apology from Drudge. The apology is probably not forthcoming. [UPI]

Is the Drudge Report shrinking? One blog thinks so, and cites Alexa data — by far the most inaccurate of the website-measurement sites — to prove it. Is Drudge shrinking? No, but it also isn't growing as fast as some other sites, including the 3-year old Huffington Post. HuffPo has certainly grown its readership, recently passing 3 million unique visitors per month. But where it really matters — total visits and daily uniques, the number of people who come back every day — Drudge continues to dominate. All the more impressive, since Drudge maintains a tiny two-person staff, while HuffPo's fills a SoHo office. The sites compared by (more accurate) numbers:

When will the Pulitzer committee allow online reporting to be considered for an award? People have been asking that question for more than a decade. But blog-sympathizing critics of the prize really need to ask is whether including online news would make a difference in who won.

Just before falsely accusing people of conspiring to murder a rapper, the Los Angeles Times burned a close colleague of internet publisher Matt Drudge in another, less egregious instance of slipshod journalism. In February, the paper ran a story about private-school-to-the-stars Crossroads, and allowed the schoolmaster to say a book co-authored by Andrew Breitbart, Drudge's West Coast partner-in-blogging, was partly fabricated. The paper never bothered to get reaction from Breitbart or his co-author. Woops. Finally published earlier this month, this is not the sort of correction you want to have to run about a blogger with massive amounts of traffic at his command and who you're probably seeking links from on a regular basis:

Internet news person Matt Drudge takes the Vatican's announcement today that there are now more Muslims on earth than Catholics as an opportunity to, well, do what he does. Look at the scary Muslim. He's coming to get you! But there's still hope, Christians.

Army man Prince Harry has left Afghanistan following Matt Drudge's release of his whereabouts. The British military has decided it was too risky for the spare Prince to stay there with his location known. Predictably, the British blame the American media for our general boorishness.