As a huge fan of Arianna Huffington's ever-changing moods, I was as excited as a Brentwood valet on Oscar night when I heard she was penning her 56th book of the past two years, following in the footsteps of her classics, "Fearless," "Hypocrite" and "Opportunist."
Hence, "Despicable."
As Arianna Huffington likes to remind us every few seconds, she's really really never liked President Obama, even less than she liked Bill Clinton, whose impeachment she saw as a moral victory for her and Newt Gingrich. But that was the 20th century. People change. Liberals love redemption - we welcome change and are understanding that points of view change. Liberals are large, we contain multitudes.
Arianna Huffington contains universes.
Here she is in 2000, railing against Bush and running against Arnold Schwarzennegger in one of the most corrupr recall elections in history, orchestrated by Darryl Issa to protect Enron: http://issaoversight.org/...
I was in love with Arianna. I hoped, nay, expected her to bring up the Enron connection. Never happened, even after Schwarzenner's insults. Anyway, we know who won. But Arianna was off and running into the progressive wilderness. I enjoyed her combative style and often thought she made the best points against Team Bush during his reign of error.
Then came "The Huffington Post" and her future was assured. The world demanded a "progressive" Drudge Report. And Arianna was such a progressive! She loved telling everybody how progressive she was - and she was even harsher on those who had been progressives most of their life as opposed to two and a half years. But hey, she's clearly a fast learner. Except when it comes to vaccinations. But I digress.
So The Huffington Post went to work in 2008, siding with Obama and trashing Hillary Clinton as frequently as it could (I assume Arianna was having a 90's anti-Clinton flashback). Taking its cue from such respected sources as Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart, the Huffington Post developed a charming way of turning a non-story into a SCREAMING HEADLINE that could have been written for a Murdoch paper.
More importantly, the fearless Huffington Post spent a good portion of 2010 trying to self-fulfill prophecies about the mid-term losses that were a'coming -- as they did due to liberal unenthusiasm. Orchstrated by sites like the progressive Huffington Post.
Like many folks among the cultural elite, fads and trends come and go faster than the click of a link to an anti-vaccine essay by Jim Carrey. So I understand why Arianna Huffington ferociously embraced the concept of "branding," - proving she knew the concept by using the word "fearless" in every single sentence she uttered in publicity for her 2008 global best-seller.
And to prove that wasn't just another fly-by-night pop-psychology bromide, Arianna Huffington continued her fearless progressivism by announcing she was moving "beyond left and right" -- quite fitting as she never stopped moving from position to position with the speed of a corporate sell-out as she railed against Obama's "corporatism" : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So what if she raked in millions and hundreds of AOL workers were laid off? That's not Arianna Huffington's fault -- or problem. She's got more important fish to fry, like President Obama, who apparently in four years has done nothing to pleae the torch-bearer for modern liberalism. But as Arianna told Newt when their yachts bumped into each other, "We're all in the same boat here."
So the corporatists who don't own the media never question Arianna on her site's misleading headlines, nor her political schizophrenia - but that wouldn't be get the chuckles on Stephen Colbert nor Jon Stewart, who actually never received the memo that Arianna was so far beyond their antiquated liberalism.
And the corporatist media awarded The Huffington Post, not for its hunting and gathering of unpaid writers and stolen stories, but for original content. That's the kind of credibility that not even a Greek tycoon could buy. And so I understand why Arianna Huffington was sore when President Obama's only shout-out to her was this:
"There's no one out there linking to the kinds of hard-hitting journalism that HuffPo is linking to every single day. And you don't pay them! It's a great business model."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And frankly, just because he has a Nobel Prize and she only a Pulitzer, doesn't mean he should be so petty. Arianna would never stoop to such behavior as she so eloquently proved this past weekend on "CBS This Morning": http://www.cbsnews.com/...
Then she showed her "Fearless" nature by bravely stepping up to defend Mitt Romney against Obama's ad reminding voters who attacked his Bin Laden strategy:
"But to turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do.”
http://www.politico.com/...
I googled "despicable" "Arianna Huffington" "birthers" but could find no links. I assume Arianna had a salon with Alec Baldwin, Tony Perkins and Deepak Chopra to attend.
But lo and behold! Amazon lists her next book as "Despicable: How To Make Media And Money Pretending To Be A Progressive"
I eagerly await her proclamation that she's so far left now she's become right.