http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2489217.eceSeptember 23, 2007
Why is Matt Drudge in hiding?He exposed Clinton’s Oval Office capers, but wants Hillary for president. His verdict on politics and celebrity is vicious, capricious and career-threatening. But why is America’s most powerful political blogger in hiding? By Philip Weiss
My mission is to find Matt Drudge, and I’m failing... I’ve e-mailed the author of the Drudge Report countless times, and written letters to him at the two places he owns in Miami to say that I’m coming to town and want to talk, but when I check into my hotel, there’s still no note from him at the desk. It’s late Sunday night, and in my room I turn on the weekly radio show he broadcasts to scores of American cities – apparently from his living room. Drudge is on his favourite theme, surveillance cameras everywhere, his belief that Google wants to spy on us and pass it all on to the government. At such times, Drudge comes across as a hunted man.
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I call in to the show a few times: 1-866-4-drudge. Busy. You can often hear Drudge at his keyboard even when he’s on air, so I drop him another e-mail. Then the next morning I go round to his two addresses. I’d e-mailed Drudge “Not Stalking You; Coming to Miami,” because I know how feverish he is about the prying press. When Lindsay Lohan had her accident in Beverly Hills in May, Drudge said it was caused by violent “stalkerazzi”. He said: “That’s probably why she was drunk and higher than a kite… because she has no life and no privacy… they create their villains and then they report on them.”
Not that this philosophy keeps Drudge from posting paparazzi pictures on the Drudge Report, or milking the Paris Hilton drama. I ring and knock on two doors: the high-rise condo on the beach where Drudge first moved when he came to Miami in 2001, then the $1.4m Mediterranean-style stucco house he bought on Rivo Alto Island a couple of years later. There’s a large, faded American flag hanging from a palisade and two cars in the driveway, but no sign of the Corvette that Drudge listed on old condo records in 2002, nor the black Mustang of more recent vintage. The fact is, I’m not even sure where Drudge lives. A friend says that the 40-year-old Drudge couldn’t deal with the upkeep on the house and moved back to a condo on the beach, and the Los Angeles Times says it slipped a note under Drudge’s door at the Four Seasons tower, the tallest building on the bay.
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Lower taxes were a prime factor in Drudge’s flight to Florida from California in 2001. Surveillance was another factor. A photographer took pictures of him through his apartment window in Hollywood. “People are basically exhibitionists and voyeurs; they’re happy to be watched,” he says, scornfully.
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When Drudge was 15 years old, crisis rocked the family. His mother was hospitalised, and a few weeks later Drudge was arrested. “Juvenile court told me that he was arrested on June 18 for making annoying phone calls,” his father testified in a hearing on child support. “He’s got a problem of making annoying phone calls to a girl,” Drudge’s mother testified.
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