Arianna Huffington's much-touted über-blog The Huffington Post launched today and I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not a huge fan of Arianna Huffington, but her political transformation from Republican socialite to limousine liberal makes her a somewhat interesting character (and her lilting Greek accent adds some international flair). She knows how the corporate money-and-power game is played and understands the habits of the elite - it takes one to know one, after all. Her 2003 candidacy for the California goverrnorship was a joke and cheap publicity stunt, but to her credit, she keeps looking for ways to stir the pot and reinvent herself. A few years back she was covering the 1996 election sitting in a bed next to Al Franken. Since then, she's been a best-selling author, pundit and gadfly who has worked both sides of the street. Now she's decided to be a blogger. Well, why not? Blogging is democratic enough to accommodate even plutocrat populists who hang with rich celebrities.
Huffington has been promoting her effort for the past few weeks, touting an "A-list" of media luminaries like Walter Cronkite, Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, Tina Brown, Ellen DeGeneres and Mike Nichols. But this is the least interesting part, as these are people who command suffiicient public attention to make their opinions known anyway, and their posts aren't particularly insightful, clever or noteworthy. Political scholar Norm Ornstein, playwright Seth Greenland and New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine do much better.
In addition to the blog itself, half the site functions as a news service a la Drudge (a comparison Huffington both encourages and denies), and it's not bad at all. As of the evening of May 9, the headline screams: HUFFINGTON POST EXCLUSIVE: EMBARGOED BOOK CLAIMS SAUDI OIL INFRASTRUCTURE RIGGED FOR CATASTROPHIC SELF-DESTRUCTION. This chilling post draws on Gerald Posner's forthcoming book on the Saudis, Secrets of the Kingdom and elicits thoughtful responses from terrorism expert Daniel Pipes and military strategist Brian Haig. This is good stuff, and far more compelling than the celebrity drivel touted by the major media. Moreover, her willingness to prominently feature conservatives like Pipes on her front page shows that she is interested in a range of viewpoints.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this assessment. Nikki Finke of The LA Weekly in particular thinks she is short on A-list celebrities, and that her blog is an embarrassment - proof positive that Arianna has jumped the shark (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt). She also cites as a problem that Huffington's blog expert is Andrew Breitbart, whose former association with Drudge and his disdain for Hollywood are both apparently grounds for treason in Finke's eyes. I doubt most of Arianna's readers will care, and if celebrities shun her project, so much the better; then she can focus on getting more real bloggers into the mix. A perusal of her blogroll demonstrates she (or at least Breitbart) knows where to find them.
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