Egg on his chest?
Online columnist death match!
Walls and Drudge duke it out on Page Six;
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By Amy Reiter
March 8, 2000 | I knew the brawl
between online gossipists Jeannette
Walls and Matt Drudge would get ugly, but who could have
predicted allegations of a smeared egg sex fetish?
Certainly not me.
The bickering began when Walls printed the well-circulated
rumor that Drudge is gay in her new book, "Dish." The scuffle
escalated when Drudge accusing Walls of a pattern of inaccuracy;
and finally took a turn for the preposterous late last week.
"My father once warned me against getting into fights with nuts,"
Walls wrote in her MSNBC column last Friday.
"'Passers-by won't know which of you is the crazy person,' he said."
Her dad makes a very good point. But nevertheless, Walls couldn't resist
taking a swipe or two at Drudge. (Remember when he posted those fake
stories about Sidney Blumenthal's wife-beating and Bill Clinton's love
child?
Well, thanks to Walls, now you do.)
"Hello, I'm sorry," Walls tells me. "I'm a bit of a junkyard dog.
Don't pick a fight with me, please."
What's more, Walls says she finds it "hypocritical that a man who has become
a spokesman of the far right has led a lifestyle at odds with the ultra-conservative
values he supposedly embraces."
And she finds it "ironic that a man whose entire career has been
based on revealing the sexual behavior of others has a sexual
history of his own that he now seems at pains to hide."
And what pains! After Washington landscaper David Cohen
confirmed to Daily News columnist George Rush that he did, in
fact, date Drudge, as Walls had reported, and after Walls hinted
that she had refrained from printing even more "lurid allegations"
about him in her book, Drudge seemed to get a little panicky.
After a mutual friend of both gossipists tipped off Drudge as to
just what these "lurid allegations" were -- a nasty case of pubic
lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre
egg fetish -- he began to spread them himself.
"MSNBC reporter Jeannette Walls is telling associates that she
has obtained information linking Matt Drudge with a sexual
preference for eggs," Drudge wrote on Friday in a column that
has since vanished from his site, along with his link to standing
Walls column ("Oh, that hurt," she scoffs). "He likes to have sex
with eggs. He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies."
Drudge even went so far as to print Walls' home phone number,
work number and e-mail address on his site and to ask readers to share
their own
"Drudge sex stories." (All false, he says: "How can I be [gay] when I am
dating a
woman with boobs and rollers?" To which Walls counters: "Hello, 'boobs
and rollers'?
You just proved your heterosexuality beyond doubt. I'm sold.")
But, although Walls says she was "absolutely inundated with
phone calls and e-mail ... some from people wishing me a slow
painful death," Drudge's distraction tactic may ultimately have backfired.
"I know sometimes the best defense is a good offense," she tells
me, "but you gotta be careful you're not hitting yourself in the face."
Walls stands behind the allegations, which she thinks never would
have made it out if Drudge hadn't aired them.
"It's all very well sourced," she told the New York Post's Page Six.
"If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass."
Splat!
So what now? Walls says she's ready to back off. "I pride myself
as being someone who won't walk away from a fight," she tells me.
"But this looks a little bit more like a temper tantrum."
Then again, she says, "I am a scrapper. If he wants to pick
another fight, honey, I'm up to it."
And Drudge? He's playing it a little closer to the vest. Asked to
comment on the recent Page Six item detailing the scuffle, he
responds: "Page Six rocks! So do you ..."
Well, I certainly wouldn't mind if that was the last word on the matter.