Is ‘tosser’ the default setting for all Americans?

I am neither a royalist nor a fan of the British presence in Afghanistan, but right now I am lost for a single charitable thing to say about Matt Drudge.

It seems to me that he has just confirmed (to the reasoning world – of which he certainly isn’t an inhabitant) that there is a fair bit of meat on the bones of the stereotypical view that sees Americans as a bunch of clueless tossers.

Those who seek to defend Drudge – and what a drudge his semi-illiterate drunken drivel is – are desperately throwing all manner of moral equivalences at us; but I defy anyone to tell me how you can compare the exposure of a hypocrite in high office with deliberately (and just because you can) endangering the life of a young man who has done nothing more shocking than simply doing his job.

It is the journalistic equal of a penis substitute. It is Drudge feeding his insatiable desire to tell the world that knows something that no-one else knows … except they did know and – because they don’t suffer from Drudge’s undignified inferiority complex – they had the good sense and decency to keep their traps shut.