Dean Esmay thinks that, like Bill O’Reilly, Matt Drudge is a “butthead.” Further, he contends that Drudge is one of us:

Only he’s afraid to be called a weblogger. Apparently, he thinks that’s beneath him.

Let me tell you something, Matt Drudge: a weblogger is all you ever were, and it’s all you ever will be. You were in the right place at the right time with the right idea, and you were pretty good. Yes, you pre-date the current lingo, but you’re still one of us, and always will be.

I concur in part and dissent in part. Drudge is in some ways a blogger: He mainly provides links to content generated by other people. But he also differs from us in a couple of important ways. One, he actually does reportage and occasionally breaks significant news stories. That’s not unheard of among bloggers (witness Laurence‘s breaking the story of the Orrin Hatch software mini-scandal), but it’s rather unusual. Sure, he gets most of it wrong and over-hypes the rest, but that’s not much different than the NYT or CNN. Also, Drudge is in some ways less than a blogger: He rarely provides commentary, unless you count hyperbolic and misleading headlines. Not so much as a “heh.” And, as Tiger would note, he doesn’t have a comments feature.