Democratic new media guy Kombiz Lavasany e-mailed that he doesn't buy my theory — and others' — that the current wave of TSA bashing is a measure of the enduring power of Matt Drudge, and we e-mailed a bit on the question of what drives the Internet.

His view (lightly edited for clarity):

It's hard to explain this, but the TSA stuff isn't a Drudge win. (I realize that's what reporters refresh.) Drudge can focus on anything and it'll generate some news, but Reddit and Boing Boing were on this before Drudge.

This blew up like a giant Internet meme — and Drudge doesn't do that. I realize you're more likely to read Drudge than scan Reddit for articles and political memes but Reddit (lefty/libertarians) and to an extent Boing Boing were much more instrumental in elevating political ideas than Drudge.

I would venture to say that as weird as it is, Reddit is as important for political memes right now as the Huffington Post. There have been hundreds of links about the TSA stuff and there have been days over the past several weeks when multiple have been on the front page at once.

Reddit drive memes, lots of them and not just Rickrolling, and lot of times they're political. It's hard to prove what drives online memes, but I just don't think that Drudge is that important.