Hissyfits over headlines
A few days ago, Matt Drudge linked to an article about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan. He sliced through the cutaneous and subcutaneous fat and cut right to the guts of the piece, linking with this headline: “Health insurance proof required for work.”
Joe Klein of Time didn’t like Drudge’s six-word summary of the article, and threw a fit on Time’s Swampland blog.
Between you and me, my first thought was to blame Mrs. Klein for creating a situation whereby her husband’s most intense release was achieved by banging away on a keyboard, having been worked into an emotional lather by a stronger, more dominant male blogger.
But then I realized that a few people reading this blog may suspect I’m talking about them, so I decided to not even mention it.
My second thought, and the one I’ll say out loud, is that Joe Klein is seriously underestimating the intelligence of the political crowd. Despite their outward partisan posture, most political people are pretty reasonable. Drudge may provide a certain thought map with his words, but Rs, Ds, Libertarians and Greens are smart enough to read the piece in its entirety and find their own way home.
Of course, I doubt that Klein is truly mad at Drudge after all of this. When Drudge links to his blog, Klein receives exponentially more-than-usual attention — which, in the end, is all most of these guys really care about anyway.
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