Impeachment: American Crime Story dredges up Drudge to make a point
The new media vs. old media battle takes center stage on a different kind of episode
TV Reviews Impeachment: American Crime Story
After two episodes that were heavy on the catty, petty, and lurid, the third episode of Impeachment: American Crime Story attempts something different. This week’s protagonist is Matt Drudge, he of the ridiculous fedora and the even more ridiculous conservative website The Drudge Report. Which has only been made to feel less ridiculous because the likes of Breitbart, NewsMax and wherever your QAnon aunt gets her misinformation make it seem almost quaint.
It could be argued though that Drudge did it first and maybe that he even did it best. For though his style of chaos is one of the reasons why our democracy is in constant peril, it can’t be denied that he got scoops and he offered them faster than the old fogies back in established media outlets. This week, we are offered his origin story. Moreover, we are offered the origin story of the media landscape we have now: overwhelmingly digital, fragmented, niche, maybe more democratized, but also troublingly clickbaity and unverified.
Billy Eichner is an inspired choice for the role, bringing his own ballsy energy to any interaction. We first encounter him as a store manager at a CBS gift shop in Los Angeles, at the ready with wealth of trivia knowledge about legendary newscasters. He garners no respect from his underlings, but it matters little for he already sees himself as a film noir character come to life. He wears a trench coat to emulate his hero, Walter Winchell—a commentator who trafficked in gossip and later became an actor. At night, he sends his missives via email to a list of subscribers which means we have come full circle, folks. Here we were thinking Substack had come to save or destroy journalism and it turns out it’s just another 90s trend making a comeback.
If an internet writer holding a day job to pay for his shitty apartment feels standard, the show reminds us this was a novelty back in the Clinton era. There is an underlying tone of admiration in the way that Drudge is portrayed in Impeachment. He is presented a foil to the steadfast elitism that dominated newsrooms. At a party in Lauren Ingraham’s home, he is side eyed by the living Crypt Keeper known as Ann Coulter who mocks him for using the internet. Drudge, unfazed, argues that his reach can potentially surpass that of The New York Times and cheerfully declares “print is dead.” Where is the lie?
After all, mainstream, professional, supposedly level-headed Republicans are being seduced by this new format. One of Coulter’s minions—or “elves” as she calls them, which means that even at my meanest I’m still more diplomatic than Coulter at her most congenial—is already fanboying over Drudge. He tips him off that there is another woman that is thinking of accusing Bill Clinton of sexual harassment besides Paula Jones.
This puts Drudge on equal footing with Newsweek reporter, Michael Isikoff who is still looking into the Kathleen Willey story. Isikoff, however, does not see as Drudge as a colleague but as a two-bit rumor mill, a nuisance. And, of course, there is some truth to that assessment. Drudge though becomes a mouthpiece to hurl many righteous complaints about established media. They’re elitist, more interested in educational pedigree of reporters than in raw talent. They’re behind the times, ignoring the power of the internet to their detriment. They’re unaware that their business is changing, even as they function as stern gatekeepers. And to finish off this mini takedown, Drudge unsettles Isikoff by revealing that the gossip he’s been chasing? That’s true.
For Isikoff, though, nothing is true until it can be verified because he still believes in journalistic standards and integrity. It’s why he spends most of the episode trying to get Linda Tripp to talk. Though she emphatically states that she wants no part of this mess, her actions beg to differ. She chastises him for calling her at the Pentagon but gives him her personal phone number. She continues to cajole Lewinsky against her better judgement, convincing her to write Bill Clinton a bitter, somewhat unhinged letter. She confronts Willey when she learns through Monica that Willey has been in touch with the White House.
Willey, at this point though, has been groped by the president, lost her husband, and is being hounded by the White House. She has, in other words, no fucks left to give. But she does have some choice words for Tripp: “You love this. You love the drama… This is exactly where you want to be because in your own life, there’s absolutely nothing.” Where is the lie?
Tripp’s tragedy is that she cannot see herself clearly. She uses Lewinsky’s letter to vent about her own professional frustrations, adding to the original words like “disposable and insignificant.” When she finally accepts to Isikoff, she does so at a salon, which might as well be considered a modern Greek agora for women in DC. It’s why when describing Willey to Isikoff, she might as well be describing herself for she is the one with an overwhelming desire to center herself in all stories. In her mind, she is an arbiter of truth. Of course she should be in the spotlight.
But the reality is that The Drudge Report breaks the Willey story first, fact-checking be damned. And when the Newsweek article comes out, Isikoff has done his due diligence and where a source is quoted saying, “Tripp is not to be believed.” It’s an interesting contrast the show sets up about who or what is to be considered credible moving forward. Both Drudge and Tripp are unreliable, off-putting to a certain DC crowd, and users of hearsay to advance their own goals. Tripp, deep down inside, wants external validation from the old guard though. Drudge is perfectly happy to leave them in the dust. He sees the future and it’s not being created by the Isikoff’s of the world. It’s being created by the nobodies behind the screen, who favor a good story over certified facts.
Stray observations
- The Supreme Court Case that allowed Paula Jones to pursue her sexual harassment suit is Clinton vs. Jones, which indicated a civil lawsuit can be put forth against a sitting president for acts done before their presidency or unrelated to it. This was a unanimous decision. The case would later be brought up again and again during Trump’s presidency as both a defense for and against any potential lawsuit. Go figure.
- Paula Jones being manipulated by her boneheaded husband Steve and that country-club meddler Susan is one of the most infuriating moments in any episode.
- Young Monica Lewinsky continues to charm me. Choosing “Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS” as a romantic parting gift? Be still my heart.
- If you must know, Matt Drudge is no longer a conservative darling. Sad!
58 Comments
I’m familiar with Matt Drudge, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a picture of him, so I never really had a conception of what he looks like. When I saw the photo above I thought Billy Eichner was playing R. Crumb, pre-mustache.
One of Drudge’s few good qualities is that he values his privacy and rarely seeks any kind of spotlight. Even 25 years ago, that was a rare quality in someone so famous.
Funny thing about that is he briefly hosted a Fox News show in the ‘90s.
I thought it was Christian Slater. I had to scroll up a few times to confirm, yep that’s Billy Eichner not Slater.
I think that the only photo of Drudge that is familiar to anyone is a black-and-white shot of him in a white shirt, open collar, loosened tie and a fedora pushed back on his head, trying to look like Winchell or some other ‘50s style newspaperman.
Drudge is rarely seen but he does actually dress like that
Between the casting and the costuming this is pretty accurate
From memory, the book this is based on talks plenty about how poorly Paula Jones was treated by pretty much every single person involved, but particularly her husband who made her pursue the whole thing. She was largely uninterested in legal action or anything like that and he dragged her into it.Didn’t she go all in on MAGA too?
I hate to assume but she’s from a small town in Arkansas, was groped by the evil Democrat president that a lot of people in Arkansas hated, and treated like crap by the “liberal” media. I’d be very surprised if she ever voted Democrat.
I ended up looking it up and she appeared on stage with Trump in 2016 and endorsed him.
I always feel bad for women who move from one abuser to the next.
That is exactly what I was thinking. Could you imagine thinking Trump is better because he gropes less woman than Clinton?
He doesn’t, though. He grabs them by the pussy.
One of Coulter’s minions […] is already fanboying over Drudge.
That’s George Conway, now husband of KellyAnne. Right?When he says “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard”, after Coulter points out that Michigan Law is Top 10, cause it’s not Ivy League, it gotta be one of the elitist thing ever said.Is he joking? Or has he been a huge gaping asshole his whole life?
Ding Ding Ding…
I thought the ‘saddest thing’ was Coulter being insecure about her credentials because she thought Laura Ingraham went to a more regarded law school (UVA, for what it’s worth.) Even so, Conway was one of Coulter’s elves, so yes, gaping asshole.
I’m confused by the way Tripp is portrayed.She seems to genuinely like Monica, in her way, if only as a break from the drudgery of her Pentagon job. She gives her bad advice, but is she supposed to be setting her up the whole time? She really does seem to want to stay out of the scandal until Major Dad snubs her and sends her over the edge. Am I missing some levels.And she’s telling the truth about Willy even though she hates the Clintons, at least the way they showed it (IIRC). I’d always seen Willy as more sympathetic than this show does.
“I have to hand this to Gerald McRainy in 20 hours!” is the funniest line so far.
Also hilarious, Drudge firing up his modem, and then making tea while it connects.How did humans live like that? It seems like the Dark Ages now.
Also, Isikoff furiously flipping through his Rolodex.
We not only lived like that, we’d spend minutes — MINUTES — waiting for a download of a still-shot of porn to finish
My impression is we’re meant to THINK that Tripp was always out to get the scandal from Monica. Her meeting with the Amazing Book Editor Margo Martindale, she was told she has to have something explosive to get any money/power out of a book. That same episode she becomes overly friendly with Monica and calls the editor to ask how “inside” does her source need to be?But the acting is confusing because she actually seems to like Monica? Or maybe she’s just acting inside of acting?Tripp in real life hated Monica and thought she was an idiot and beneath Tripp. To give rambling MAGA crazyperson Tripp the benefit of the doubt, Monica was acting like an idiot at the time.
Lewinsky was obviously a needy and insecure young woman, so Tripp’s ability to manipulate her is not surprising. My take has always been that Tripp liked having someone close to the president to gossip with (and who was naive enough not to know better), then lucked into something she could use.
I was assuming Tripp wasn’t supporting Willey’s story because she wanted Tripp’s story of Monica to be splashed all over the news and if Willey’s story was out, Monica’s wouldn’t be as important or as splashy?But honestly I’m not sure her motivations so all I can do is assume.
Tripp is portrayed as someone who’s a bit psychopathic and can’t really feel for anyone, but in real life to the degree that Tripp could be friends with someone, she had a lot in common with Monica.
If Monica is needy and extremely naive, I give a lot of credit to grown-up Monica for allowing such warts to come out about younger Monica considering she had script approval for every episode
Paulson made the choice to portray Tripp as a nasty, snarling caricature and the writing and performance has yet to deviate from that at all.
Willy was clearly sexually assaulted by the president. Geez, have some sympathy
It must be fun feeling so smug and superior to a working journalist when you cannot even be bothered to learn basic English. Among other things, “Isikoff’s” means it belongs to Isikoff, not a plural number of people named Isikoff, and the TV character’s name is “Cryptkeeper” one word, lowercase K, ffs.Secondly, Drudge DID surpass the New York Times in readership. You might remember the NYT as the paper that sat on the NSA spying story to help re-elect George W. Bush, published a ton of fake articles by Judith Miller that advocated murdering Iraqis, covered up the US bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos, supported genocide in Indonesia, supported the coup in Honduras, threw in tons of lies to sex up their “1619 Project,” avidly supported the pedo organization “The Lincoln Project” simply because it was anti-Trump, refused to acknowledge that Covid may have come from a US-funded lab in China for an entire year, spun lies about Iraq’s “aluminum tubes,” and hired several blatant plagiarists like Jayson Blair, amongst other things.Sheesh, why couldn’t Drudge have been more like the saintly NYT?Lastly, here’s what real writers had to say about Drudge:“When Drudge had the goods, he had the goods. He had this uncanny way of getting real stuff that we were all missing,” [New York Times reporter] Rutenberg says. “There was a lot of ambivalence because he was this upstart, he wasn’t from our sort of journalistic training, per se. He hadn’t done the stations of the cross of journalism, but often he was kicking our ass.”
kill yourself, you old fuck
Society needs people like Matt Drudge.It also needs people to fight against people like Drudge. But if the Drudges aren’t there to fight against, people become complacent…
You sound like a pinko commie Rag. Im not going to rebut your shitty “whataboutism” because you suck, and should just shut the fuck up
The “pedo organization” of the Lincoln Project was literally one guy on the board who was doing bad stuff. How you can call the entire organization that is…well, not a surprise, since your kind typically engage in all sorts of lies, mistruths, slippery slopes, nonsense and other such things. Laughable, if you weren’t such a foolish liar, too. Yes, you “got everyone” there, bud, great job. Took down the NY Times, you’re like, um, the next Matt Drudge.You must feel GREAT after hitting publish on that one, huh?
It’s way easier than you think for a journalist to make mistakes. That’s why they have copy editors. It doesn’t invalidate their words.
I’ve been published continuously as a journalist for 11 years in 3 dozen publications including the washington post, washington times, and espn and my grammar’s actually not that much better than average. it’s why we have copy editors.
For a second I thought “What does T. Herman Zweibel have anything to do with the Lewinski scandal? I thought he was a fake character.”
Even now, once a month, I still think of the phrase “incense-huffing Vaticanite” from Our Dumb Century, I believe.
I miss that version of the Onion terribly.
SameIn the late 90’s/early 2000’s, I worked part-time at a Barnes & Noble when I discovered The Onion and it was like an awakening.
“No fucking way”- Bill Clinton, probably.
I’m warming up to Clive Owen’s portrayal, lol
There is an underlying tone of admiration in the way that Drudge is portrayed in Impeachment.
Is there? I found him to be pretty gross.
Amusing sure, but everything wrong with where we’re at today. Whatever
ribbing he was receiving from others looking down on him, played as
tropey as any villain origin story. The other reporter believes in
integrity and wants to verify his sources? What a loser, right? Go
Figure AV Club would side with the clickbaity cad.
‘Go Figure AV Club would side with the clickbaity cad.’Also too:‘For though his style of chaos is one of the reasons why our democracy is in constant peril, it can’t be denied that he got scoops and he offered them faster than the old fogies back in established media outlets.’You gotta hand it to Drudge, he showed how fast those old fogies could be publishing malicious unsourced gossip! I’m sure the show will eventually show that Drudge became the pipeline through with right-wing outlets would launder their material.
When I read an AV Club writer bemoaning the “clickbait-y” and “unverified” nature of today’s online content, I was struck by the complete lack of self-awareness.
“One of Coulter’s minions—or “elves” as she calls them, which means that even at my meanest I’m still more diplomatic than Coulter at her most congenial—is already fanboying over Drudge.”This is like, the third recap in a row where the reviewer has not acknowledged that the “minion” is supposed to be George Conway.
I didn’t know that! Was Coulter uninterested in him so he settled with the next best thing, another batshit loony, conservative blonde?
Just a comment about Sarah Paulson. I am amazed at her portrayal of Linda Tripp … not only the physical characterization, but her facial expressions and especially the way she walks. It’s unfortunate that she received so much criticism about her casting, i.e. that a legitimately heavier person should have played the role instead of having someone gain weight plus add props to make her look heavier (as far as I know, no one is criticizing Clive Owen for being British and faking an American accent). Sarah is one of the finest actresses working today and why would anyone criticize her selection in order to have a heavier actress, with perhaps lesser acting ability, cast in that role. While I’m not a huge fan of some of the characters she and others have played in American Crime Stories, I love her portrayal of Tripp in this series.
And I think Cobie Smulders really nails Ann Coulter.I’ve only ever known her as Robin from How I Met Your Mother, but I didn’t even recognize her til I happened to see her name in the cast.
She sounds just like Coulter.
Smulders is so good in this. She so often just plays “hot chick” roles so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but she’s nailing it.
Every episode I go back to check who plays Coulter, and I see it is Smulders and every time I am surprised.
It really does feel like Ryan Murphy performed some kind of demonic spell to summon young Ann Coulter.
Nobody suggested hiring someone of lesser acting ability!
There have been a number of comments online criticizing the casting of Sarah Paulson … I did not mean that it was someone on this site. What I did mean to convey, however, is that there is a possibility that the choice to have a more physical match COULD HAVE resulted in a less skillful actress since Sarah is pretty hard to beat. I felt bad for her when in response, she did not apologize (nor should she have) but she did say that in retrospect, she may have given it more thought.
Right, I just meant that the people criticizing the fat suit choice did not mean they should’ve cast a lesser actress in the role. The assumption that no size 12 actress could possibly be as good as Sarah Paulson is part of the problem. I agree that she’s excellent in the role, but the fat suit is distracting and goofy and it’s frustrating to think of how many actresses can’t get work due to their size (unlike tiny Paulson), and when a role comes up that is the right fit physically, they’re not even on the table. This is different from something like an accent, since American actors don’t struggle to find work due to having American accents.
But who cares? Sarah Paulson is great in this role.
Do you intentionally leave out the channel this appears on? (FX) I noticed this on many reviews, not just this one. Half the time the reader has to IMDB to find out how to watch.
Being from Lonoke, AR (Paula Jones is in my yearbook!) I’m laughing my head off it’s been mentioned by name in every episode so far, in fact multiple times in this latest one. I’m kinda hoping this is a running joke and they work it into every episode. I just noticed the writer of the show shares my last name as well LOL.
You don’t matter.
That’ s not nice. Bad Kevin.
So Clinton wouldn’t have paid a dime? He exposed himself to her. I didn’t know there was insurance for that kind of thing. It’s like GIECO for your dick
Anne pretending she cares about flabby con-men in the white house. What a laugh.
I don’t think Paula Jones is “manipulated” by anyone. Her husband and Judith Light have both helped her get what she wants as far as I can tell.
I’m way behind on the season, but at the moment Tripp is the only thing interesting about it. They’ve shown very little of what has actually transpired with Lewinsky and Clinton. The stuff with Paula Jones is hamstrung by really distracting make-up (prosthetics?) and acting. Her story seems sad and it should be compelling, but it just falls flat. And no one else in the show seems remotely believable as their characters.