Salon.com > Noah Shachtman

Matt Drudge, GOP scourge?

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:44:00 +0000

Liberals, Bush-haters, disillusioned right wingers: Meet your new journalistic hero, your muckraking defender of the everyman, your razor-sharp slasher of the Bush White House and Arnold Schwarzenegger's drive to take over California for the GOP.

Meet Matt Drudge.

OK, don't sign him up for a Salon Premium subscription just yet. But as unlikely as it seems, the online bottom feeder, who made his mark in the '90s spreading allegations that Bill Clinton got Oval Office nookie (true) and his aide Sidney Blumenthal beat his wife (false), is now going after the Bush White House with similar gusto.

This time, however, Drudge isn't trolling for tidbits about the administration's private lives. Instead, he's zeroing in on policy and the political messes the Bushies are making -- of the budget, of civil liberties, and of Iraq.

Just look at a sample of Drudge's headlines, from one week early in September:

"FORCES STRAINING IN IRAQ MISSIONS, CONGRESS IS TOLD ... Army troops, Budget Stretched to the Limit."

"COUNTRIES WARY IN REACTING TO BUSH'S SPEECH ON IRAQ ..."

"ZOGBY POLL: Bush Numbers Hit New Low; Dean Tops List of Dem Presidential Contenders ..."

The homeless blogger

Mon, 14 Oct 2002 19:30:00 +0000

If you want to know what cereal a total stranger eats for breakfast or how he feels about invading Iraq, there are hundreds of thousands of Internet journals, popularly known as blogs, waiting for you. But to find out where the best soup kitchen is in Nashville, Tenn., or how it feels to pick up trash until dawn for $30, or what it's like to sleep in a '71 Ford Granada, you'll have to go to Kevin Barbieux's Internet diary for answers.

Most "bloggers" bleat from a computer in their home or office. But for Barbieux, that's not possible. He doesn't own a computer. He rarely has a steady job. And for years, he hasn't had a place to call home.

Instead, Barbieux catches a few furtive hours of sleep at one of Nashville's shelters, in a public park, or underneath an abandoned building. During the day he hangs out at public libraries, spending hours updating his journal.

The idea, he says, is to use the intensely personal medium of blogging to demolish the near-universal negative stereotype of homelessness. In place of the image of the dirty, stinking wino, Barbieux hopes to insert the story of himself: clean, articulate, spiritual, busy, taking in a favorite cigar -- the Excalibur No. 1 Maduro by Hoyo De Monterey -- but staying away from junk and booze.

Prog rock lives!

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

For at least the last couple of years, video-game soundtracks have joined movie soundtracks as a lucrative sideline for pop musicians looking for a career boost. Trent Reznor's work on Quake probably has the highest profile, but now, even aging progressive rockers Yes are getting into the act -- with the title song for the new PC strategy game Homeworld.

"We've always been interested in the modern, the avant-garde," Yes front man Jon Anderson reminds us. "We were the first band to use lasers onstage."

Those far-out stage shows, combined with the band's sci-fi themes and Heavy Metal-esque album art appealed to the Dungeons & Dragons crowd of the '70s. Now, Anderson and company are trying to inspire a whole new generation of geeks with lyrics like:

Ancient ones/They watch and listen/Carry our wishes/Took upon themselves to guide us/Through the endless skies.
Anderson says he's long been attracted to video games. "I've thought about them for 10 years, ever since I met Jaron [Lanier, the virtual reality guru] in 1989," he notes. "They can be one of those immersive sound/color/perfume experiences -- real healing things that touch our chakras."
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