Via Hesiod I see that the puke-funnel is back in action. For those that don't know or don't remember, the puke-funnel starts inside the RNC or similar machine operation. From there, an item is leaked to Drudge. The initial item contains nothing substantive, no names or dates. As reporters from actual news outlets start to make calls (to the RNC or other leaking entity), more details are leaked which give the impression that there's actually a story to be told. The story is then picked up by the British press which gives it a kind of authenticity. Drudge's item sometimes contains digs at American media outlets claiming that they're either frantically working on, or are sitting on, a major scandal story. The most famous of these digs was at Newsweek for sitting on one of Michael Isikoff's shoddy pieces of yellow journalism. Once the Brits pick up the story, someAmerican outlets pick up the story. These dispatches are always blindly (and usually singlely) sourced. All of this is made more efficient by the fact that major American and British papers are owned by international conglomerates which are themselves owned by staunch rightists who put conservative columnists on the board of directors.
This is part of what Hillary Clinton meant when she announced that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy against President Clinton. I tend to disagree with her in that a conspiracy implies secrecy, while these machinations are out in the open, though not covered by the media. Unlike in 1992, when James Carville first described the puke-funnel, we now have the internet which makes tracking these stories and their seedy origins far easier.
