Why the Drudge Report Has Had 26,619,841 Visitors in the Past 24 Hours, 807,284,101 in the Past 31 Days, and 6,886,716,197 in the Past Year

Yes, he's been chastised for printing "Drudge Polls" indicating McCain will win in a landslide. And he's been scolded for using shamelessly misleading headlines to pull readers into disappointing, anti-climactic stories. But damn it, he makes news fun! Not since the Weekly World News has anyone had such a promiscuous hand with exclamation points, red type, all caps, and italics, frequently all together. The Drudge Report reminds me of people I've known (mostly children) whose standard reaction to anything is astonished, bug-eyed amazement, and Drudge seems unable to resist mixing the sensational with affairs of the Beltway. If there's a 44-pound cat somewhere in the world, or a guy in a house with 200 dogs, or a Siamese triplet with a pony hoof growing out of her head, it'll be on Drudge, fonted up to a fare-thee-well beneath a story about a Supreme Court verdict. And his fear of hurricanes will guarantee that every autumn we'll see the words "CATEGORY 4!!!" in 64-point red type. It's odd and strangely appealing that, though the Drudge Report has been a trailblazer in the world of Internet news dissemination, he still uses a typeface that appears to come from the Daisy Wheel on a Selectric typewriter, a quirk that makes his cybernews vessel look like a handout at a basement meeting of conspiracy theorists. It's only a matter of time until he realizes that a computer typeset holds the one thing that could take the Drudge Report to the next level: emoticons. Just imagine it: "SCORES DEAD AS FERRY CAPSIZES :( , BUT RESCUERS SAVE 51-POUND NEWBORN :) !!!!!"