Arianna Huffington: Behind the scenes

I've been an Arianna-watcher for a long time, probably before you ever heard of her. I knew all about Mike and MSIA before the rumors ever hit print. Now this "former" Libertarian Republican has become another pseudo-progressive dividing the Democratic party with a GOP-style smear campaign.

I wrote about her not long ago in a piece titled Being Arianna, which discussed -- among many things -- allegations that plagiarized passages appear in her books on Picasso and Maria Callas.

I always like to hear from people formerly close to this "progressive" powerhouse. My last piece prompted some interesting feedback from within the Huffington Post operation:

Arianna is obsessed with celebrities. It was all "Stop the presses!" if any minor personality wanted to contribute to the site. ("Pam Dawber wants to write about restless leg syndrome?! Sign her up!") She reminded me of acquaintances I know who will embarrass themselves horribly to rub elbows with even minor stars. But what's worse than the star-fucking was that the message almost always took a back seat to celebrity. Say someone who was relatively unknown but highly knowledgeable wrote a really good blog on an important but somewhat low-profile issue and managed to get a spot on the front page, but then a few minutes later, some C-lister like seamstress Donna Karan submitted a mediocre, inevitably self-indulgent puff piece. What do you think would happen? Yep. So long bird flu expert; Hello, DKNY Me! Me! Me!

Yep. That sounds about right.

There was always the sense that the whole thing was about attention for Arianna, never the issues. She never seemed to talk about them in a way that suggested she ever really cared about a progressive agenda -- there was never any true passion in her voice. She always spoke with the eager, smart-alecky tone of the debate team captain planning arguments for the next contest. You know, in fact, I'd bet if Hollywood's political leanings suddenly veered sharply to the right, the Huffington Post would be printing pieces in support of waterboarding and George W. Bush. Maybe Chuck Norris would be her newest pet celebrity-blogger.

She'd flip out if the comment moderators let through any comment that was even remotely critical of her or one of the celebrity bloggers. Emails would fly and then the staff would scramble to figure out who had let the offending comment through.

Here's something else that found its way into my inbox. (I won't reveal the name of the sender.) I found this data particularly interesting, given what we know of the lady's literary history:

One day Roy Sekoff called in to the office about something or other. At one point in the conversation, he mentioned that he was working on Arianna's blog for the next day. I don't remember the exact context of the comment, but I was pretty surprised to hear that he was "working on" her blog in light of the accusations that had been made against Arianna in the past.

Sure, Sekoff could have just meant that he was doing research, but when he made that comment, a lot of stuff finally seemed to make sense.

Prior to that time, I would marvel at Arianna's ability to write a new in-depth blog almost every day. It seemed almost uncanny, considering she was always at a party, taping, event, dinner with Bill Maher, or on the phone, intercom, or BlackBerry micromanaging every person in the office and household. Up until then, I'd just figured she was remarkably prolific.

Sad news, this. Arianna Huffington can be a captivating writer. Perhaps we should view her ouvre as a "workshop" effort -- rather like the paintings of Rubens?

This next bit is cute:

She never really drives that Prius. At least she didn't while I was around. She would have someone call a service, and they would send over a driver to cart her around in the Prius. So the reduction in her carbon footprint would likely be offset by the driver having to be driven to and from her place, presumably in a giant gas-sucking limo. Some big environmentalist.

If you have any inside poop on any one of my most "beloved" bloggers -- MM is of particular interest -- then please let me know. I will protect your identity, and I won't publish your words without permission.