Huffington Post, the allegedly "left-wing" site run by former right-wing nutcase Arianna Huffington, has literally
sold out to AOL.
Amusingly, the once-mighty AOL has devolved into a company whose profits largely
derive from a scam, or something close to a scam. The AOL bottom line depends on elderly people and computer illiterates who get online via DSL or cable, but who have formed the mistaken impression that they still need to pay AOL fees in order to access email.
Oddly, HuffPo recently published
a piece making that very point. Click on the link now -- the page may disappear soon.
For those of us who have always suspected that Arianna's conversion was fake, her announcement confirms her as a
thorough corporatist. If you manage to read through this woman's outrageous exercise in self-adoration, you'll see that she offers
zero commitment to progressive ideals. Instead, she offers this gem:
Add all that to what HuffPost is doing with social, community, mobile, as well as our commitment to innovative original reporting and beyond-left-and-right commentary, and the blending will have a multiplier effect.
You know full well what that "beyond-right-and-left" remark signifies: HuffPo will sell cleverly repackaged libertarianism to squishy moderates and pseudo-progs of the "Whole Foods" genus. In fact, that has been Arianna's game for quite a while now.
Arianna's announcement evinced this comment:
I've been visiting HP from the very beginning. I can remember those early days when the mission statement of HP was simply to provide an alternative news website for left-thinking individuals. Over time I've seen that mission slowly fade away with increased corporate news and the inclusion of viewpoints offered by those who have complete and utter disdain for those of us on left.
Right (as we geezers used to say) on.
The difference between AOL and HuffPo is that AOL became a scam over time, while HuffPo was (in my opinion) a scam from the beginning. I don't believe that Arianna was ever a genuine liberal. Her Hollywood connections allowed her to infiltrate a mostly-liberal community, hence her decision to pose as a convert. Her longtime associate, the notorious arch-conservative fraudmeister Andy Breitbart, later revealed that
he designed the Huffington Post site.
Until last September, the beefy 41-year-old with graying blond hair was a largely covert power in the right-wing media, the hidden hand behind the popular Drudge Report who also, weirdly, cofounded the liberal Huffington Post.
One thing Breitbart will say about Drudge, though, is that his mentor introduced him to Arianna Huffington, then a right-wing pundit and Drudge confidant. Breitbart became her researcher and Web guru. By her side, he learned that the media could be more than scooped — it could be hacked.
“I created the Huffington Post,” he says simply. “I drafted the plan. They followed the plan.”
They're
still following the plan.
Arianna thinks ten moves ahead. Younger folk may not know of her previous scheme to become shadow president of the U.S., ruling from behind the throne -- a ploy that might have worked if her former husband had not lost the 1994 election. From an
earlier post:
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.
John-Roger is the crooked leader of the dangerous MSIA cult; Arianna is a minister in that group.
According to
the NYT, AOL exec Roger Pittman heavily invested in HuffPo well before the recent merger. Other investors include Alan Patricof’s Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital, and Oak Investment Partners. Patricof, oddly enough, helped AOL get started.
Oak Investment deserves further study: According to
this page, they are related to the notorious Carlyle Group, of Bush and Bin Laden ill-fame. A Google search reveals that "Oak Investment" was once mentioned on the Carlyle Group's Wikipedia page, although that reference has been scrubbed. Oak has also worked with
SRI. A senior partner at Oak is Ranjan Chak, noted for creating offshore development centers in India.
When was the last time you saw a HuffPo piece that went after outsourcing?)
AOL's headquarters, amusingly enough, are located in Dulles, Virginia, just 15 miles away from CIA headquarters, as the crow flies. I don't believe a connection between the two organizations exists (despite the many rumors), but the geography does make me smile.
In 2008, a HuffPo Insider sent me
this insider's view of Arianna at work:
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.
Now she no longer needs Hollywood. If a genuinely left-wing alternative to Obama crops up in time for the 2012 race, don't be surprised to see HuffPo publish "investigative reports" attacking the challenger. That's what HuffPo is
for.
