a little old..but makes a great point..
http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/2008/01/does-arianna-hu.html"Does Arianna Huffington really want to be the fourth horseman of that posse of wild-eyed pundits fearing the Hillary Clinton apocalypse? To put it another way, does Arianna really want to play Ringo to Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, and Andrew Sullivan - three prominent voices who can't say the word "Hillary" without sending a river of froth from their own lips, whose rancid anti-feminism and personal hatred for the New York Senator is fully on view in every segment, every column, every blog post?
Huffington comes late to her liberalism, but she has created a juggernaut in her star-studded Huffington Post, a brilliant Tom Sawyerish paint-my-fence media play that has added a site of real substance to the media polity. But she clearly risks her own reputation - and perhaps the future of her business - by lighting out so fiercely after a single candidate that so many of her readers support, and courting the kind of backlash that washes over Matthews, Dowd, and Sullivan.
In typical fashion, Huffington attacked Clinton just before the New Hampshire primary in these terms:
So the New Hampshire race is now officially too close to call, Hillary's hypocrisy running neck and neck with her cynicism. Be very afraid, indeed.
Yes, Democrats who read the HuffPo daily for its wide variety of progressive bloggers, be very afraid of Hillary Clinton - especially you liberal women. Here's Arianna in a post praising Barack Obama for changing politics by winning Iowa - she can't resist a vicious slam on the most prominent female American Democrat in history:
America, its vision distorted by the mushroom clouds conjured by Bush and Cheney, made a collective sprint to the bomb shelters in our minds, our lizard brains responding to fear rather than hope. And the Clintons -- their Hillary-as-incumbent-strategy sputtering -- followed the Bush blueprint in Iowa and played the fear card again and again and again.
The site relentlessly pushes positive Obama stories and negative Clinton stories on the front page, while letting more positive Clinton posts slip to the inside - the editors no doubt picking up on the unsubtle leanings of the person who signs their checks. How can this be good business for a lefty politics site in a race where 49% of Democrats currently support Hillary Clinton?
Some Democrats are noticing - I've been getting an earful via email over the past couple of months, and this exchange over on DataLounge is pretty typical of the sentiment:
I know Arianna Huffington is a democrat now. I can understand she support Obama but she never stops trashing Clintons. Is something wrong between them?
All I now is that HuffPo has turned into Obamamania Central. It's a real turn-off to supporters of Hillary and supporters of John Edwards. Hell, there was an editorial a few days ago saying that Edwards should step aside so as to not stand in the way of Obama!:*
**If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.***
I wish I could say that's parody!
Wow, is that a quote from Arianna, r1? That is disgusting. I'm so disappointed in her. Used to love her but not now.
Her personal animosity is evident in this New York Press interview, as is some strangely anti-feminist language:
“You can smell the fear on her. It wafts around her like a cheap perfume: Eau de Don’t Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances Down the Toilette. As a result of her fear of losing and the soul-sapping tyranny of trying to please and placate everybody, she’s become more processed than Velveeta.”
Fairly gross, reflux-inducing - but then again Huffington opposed the Clintons before she was a Democrat, too. Want more sexism? Here's Huffington in the LA Times:
Clinton's strategy for the presidency is threatening to become a cautionary tale about a perfect little girl who had a perfect little plan that went perfectly astray.
"A perfect little girl." Nice, Arianna. Then there was the imagined exchange Huffington dreamed up last summer between Clinton and David Letterman, before she appears on the show.
Dave: What was the deal with all that cleavage earlier this summer?
Hillary: I think the fact that the front-runner for the nomination of one of our two parties is facing a question about cleavage is a sign of progress... Or: If an American president can't flash a little cleavage, the terrorists win. Or: You mean the Rack of Freedom? Or: Dave, this kind of question is a classic example of the patriarchal double standard faced by women who assume positions of power in America. I'd prefer to focus on the future of this country. On the other hand, I do have a killer rack.
Nyuck, nyuck. Is this really how Arianna Huffington views Hillary Clinton? I've blogged for Huffington a bit over the past two years, and she runs the kind of site where you can find a wide range of views, mostly on the left. I can certainly understand the celebration of Obama's message, particularly his attraction to young people who've ignored politics. But Huffington has become one of the leading Hillary haters on the progressive side of the coin, part of that gang of snarlers blinded by their dislike of the candidate on a personal level, and it's not a particularly good crowd to be associated with".
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