Liberal Drudge?

Erstwhile conservative pundit turned leftist guilt-maven, Arianna Huffington, recently opened shop at her newest project, a "celeb-blog" called Huffingtonpost.com. In the only review I've seen thus far, the project was roundly panned by Nikki Finke, an entertainment reporter/columnist with LA Weekly.

I went to Arianna's site and read a few of the posts. I have to agree with Finke's characterization of the Julia Louis-Dreyfus piece as "unfunny shtick." I don't know, maybe it's because I'm a conservative, but most of the posts came across to me as either very smug or very preachy and condescending. What do you all think?

I can't write about Arianna Huffington, though, without telling the story of her run-in(s) with Sean Hannity on his radio program. Huffington is a promoter of the Detroit Project, which among other things has blamed SUV drivers for supporting terrorism. On Hannity's program a while back, she was plugging the Detroit Project and attacking big oil. Hannity then pointed out that Huffington should not be preaching to the rest of us given that she often travels on private jets, using more fuel on one trip than a family might use in weeks. She refused to accept the analogy or the hypocrisy, arguing that she only rides in private planes that "are already going somewhere."

I heard her again on his program yesterday, and Hannity went right back to it. This time he added the fact that one of her contributors, Norman Lear, has a 21 car garage. One would think that the hypocrisy would be apparent even to a washed up political wife. It wasn't. She insists that linking SUV's to terrorists is not preaching or lecturing to anyone, and that her use of private planes is irrelevant.

Maybe she should call it the Fudge Report?