LA Weekly: Deadline Hollywood -- Arianna's Blog Blows

[Bleacher Creature]

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/25/web-finke.php

Deadline Hollywood
Arianna's Blog Blows
Will this failure finally finish her?
by NIKKI FINKE


Judging from today's horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself. What Arianna Huffington's bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree conservative-to-liberal conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn't accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This Web-site venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable, because of all the advance publicity touting its success as inevitable. Her blog is such a bomb that it's the box-office equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven's Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it's the disastrous clone of Tina Brown's Talk, JFK Jr.'s George or Maer Roshan's Radar. No matter what happens to Huffington, it's clear Hollywood will suffer the consequences.

It almost seems like some sick hoax. Perhaps Huffington is no longer a card-carrying progressive but now a conservative mole. Because she served up liberal celebs like red meat on a silver platter for the salivating and Hollywood-hating right wing to chew up and spit out.

Of course, only the fawning mainstream media didn't see this coming; instead, The New York Times, the New York Observer, the Los Angeles Times et al. were too busy breathlessly reporting Arianna's big plans and bons mots to bother to do any reporting. (

<SNIP>

WTF?!?!? How do you declare a website a failure on its first day? And who is this author -- does she have some sort of grudge or something? Geesh!

[Maple]

1. Drudge...first day

wasn't the eyecatcher and 'name' it is now either.

It'll improve, don't worry.

[AuntiBush]

2. It certainly will w/some of the best 'round.

Agreed.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. I forgot that the the LA Weekly still existed. They give it away

The style of journalism is that of circa 1972 Oui magazine hardboiled expose'

[applegrove]

4. I liked it. I like people whose work I may have like and consumed

on the TV putting their two cents into the mix.

I like the satire.

This is the right kind of humor. It does not attack 'others'. It puts them in their place by punching through to truths. Neocons hate that. They only like the humor that ignores truths and makes outsiders feel small.

I think this was smart. I hope they have a host of Hollywood people (writers & social commentators) so that they can vet the articles and pick simply the best.

I let their TV into my home every day. Why would I be a hypocrite and pretend I didn't want to get information from them..just because it takes another form and is more political. Why would you think I would ignore Hollywood and start listening to corporatised religious leaders instead?

Excellent way to circumvent the anti-Hollywood coercion that silenced some of our most talented people for a long time.

[lapfog_1]

5. I, for one, would rather have Ariana for Gov than the Gropenator

[wookie294]

6. It's just a blog, dude !! CHILL, baby, CHILL !!

People can be SO touchy! LOL