Being Arianna

"I wanted to be Arianna." So admitted the late Peter McWilliams in his suppressed book Life 102: What to do When Your Guru Sues You. McWilliams was a spiritual seeker who stumbled into MSIA, a cult run by the bizarre John-Roger, a sexual predator and Jesus-wannabe who pretty much defines the term "narcissistic personality disorder." Arianna remains a minister within MSIA.

She used to hide her affiliation. In the mid-1990s, she was married to millionaire Michael Huffington, and was widely acknowledged as the mastermind behind his political ambitions. Born in Greece (as Arianna Stassinopoulos), she could never hope to attain the White House on her own, so she prodded her husband, scion of a conservative family, to enter politics. She was then a Republican ueber-networker devoted to a Libertarian screw-the-poor philosophy. If Paris Hilton asked a Marvel comics writer to help her formulate a world domination scheme, she'd be trodding in Arianna's Manohlo-prints.

In 1994, all politically savvy people in Santa Barbara (the Huffington home base) understood her public image to be a lie. Michael Huffington hid his homosexuality to please conservative voters. Arianna insisted to the press that she belonged to the Orthodox Church, even though "her" bishop stated that no-one could be considered a communicant who had been baptized or inducted into another faith. Life 102 contains a picture of Arianna being re-baptized by John-Roger.

Normally, someone well-known to have lied about matters of sex and spirituality would have forfeited all credibility. But Arianna transcends the rules.

After "Mike" Huffington lost his $30 million senate run to Dianne Feinstein, and after the dissolution of their "marriage," many thought that Arianna had fibbed her last fib, at least in public. Even the right-wing radio hosts in California, who never speak out against their own, mocked her ambition and her accent. The standard comparisons went to Lady MacBeth and Zsa-Zsa.

Then her columns began running in the Los Angeles Times.

I was not the only person asking: How does she do it? At a time when both the right and left laughed at her, at a time when few people cared to hear her opinions on any subject, she somehow scored a gig beyond the reach of most others.

As one writer in Hollywood explained it to me (with a sigh that still resounds in memory), there is an oligarchy, a heirarchy, a clique, a club.

Arianna knew the right people, she had money, and she carried an aura of glamor. The average Californian considered her a joke -- but in her world, average people do not count. She knew the people who counted.

She charms and she woos. Her schedule is insane. At her "salons" you'll find Diane Keaton, Nora Ephron and Jane Fonda. Bloggers on her site, which draws three million readers a month, include Norman Mailer and David Mamet. She's been called ruthless, "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus"...

After doing everything she could to derail Bill Cleeeen-ton and Al Gore, she switched ideologies the way some women change hairstyles, gliding into the Democratic Party as though she owned the place. Which, arguably, she now does.

Maintaining the last name of an ex who had every right to feel embittered (even though she held onto her birth name throughout much of the marriage), she now runs the Huffington Post. She may have entered the blogging game late -- 2004 -- yet the site prospered, thanks to her celebrity contributors. Even though many Democrats will never forgive her calumnies against the Cleeeen-tons, even though she remains a priestess of her creepy gay pseudoChrist, even though she forced another gay man to conceal his sexuality in order to further her Blofeld-esque ambitions, even though she first came to public attention as an opponent of feminism, and even though many suspect her political shift to be either feigned or superficial, her internet home is now considered "the most potent force in American politics."

There is an oligarchy, a heirarchy, a clique, a club...

And if you are in that club -- if you're made -- nothing can touch you. Consider, for example, the convincing allegations of plagiarism which followed the pubication of two of her books.

...she made her living prior to her ill-fated marriage to Michael Huffington and the founding the Huffington Post by being nothing more nor less than a rank, intentional plagiarist — politely speaking, an intellectual thief — whose publisher(s) have had to pay very, very big bucks, not “nuisance-value” payments, to settle significant plagiarism lawsuits filed against her. Moreover, with a little investigation one can find on the internet the fact that this great liberal, populist Ms. Huffington showed that she stood lockstep and heart-and-soul with the little people she so avidly supports by one year making more than $900,000 in income but paying way, way way less than 10% of that in taxes.

A plagiarism scandal of that sort would destroy most other writers. But not Arianna.

It is this high-octane power networking that has allowed the Post to gather the greatest roster of celebrity names in the blogosphere, from media stars such as Tina Brown and Norman Mailer to Hollywood figures like John Cusack, Tim Robbins, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin and Larry David. There are also politicians such as John Kerry and Gary Hart and, amazingly, not one of these contributors gets paid.

There is an oligarchy, a heirarchy, a clique, a club...

Three weeks ago, Arianna (who lives in a mansion in Brentwood) declared that Barack Obama -- the man who seems to function as her Jesus No. 2, after John-Roger -- "is no elitist."

I must concede her expertise on the topic of elitism.