Arianna: A Greek Tragedy in Only 6,200 Words

OMG! Did you read The New Republic's cover story on Arianna Huffington? Isaac Chotiner devastatingly deconstructs her in a mere 6,200 well-chosen words in his stunningly insightful review of her latest book with its overlong title, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You Need to Know to End the Madness).

His thoughtful and thought-provoking review, cleverly entitled The Puffington Host: The Many Versions of Arianna Huffington, and Their Consequences, only took me an hour and a half to read, and I'm a speed reader, although there were a lot of words I had to look up like "empiricism," "taxonomic" and "zeitgeist." But it was definitely worth the effort.

For example, I learned that the Greek-born Huffington, nee Stassinopolous, is nothing more than a modern day Trojan Horse who is determined, in her role as sole proprietor of The Huffington Post, to put us Jurassic journalists out of business. She is, as he states so effectively, the "personification of the hyperactive up-to-the-nanosecond news-and-opinion universe of the web."

Wow, and here I've been unwittingly contributing to this sinister Siren (from Greek mythology, a creature with the head of a female and body of a bird who lured sailors to their death on the rocks surrounding her island with her charming songs, just what Arianna tries to do), since its inception in 2005.

I've unwittingly enabled this woman, who blames "a craven and soulless media" for, in the words of that dour Danish existentialist Kierkegaard that she approvingly quotes, for reducing everything "into flat, surveyable, two-dimensional world events [so that] we can know exactly what has happened in the last twenty-four hours and what precisely to think about what has happened."

If I'd known that, I would never, NEVER, have agreed to contribute to HuffPost, even though I am unpaid because I want to be noticed by her nine million readers. Thank God somebody has revealed that the Greek goddess of the new media is a "right-wing contrarian" who "is adept at recognizing and navigating the social and political currents, a zeitgeist artist, even though she has written nothing that requires her to be taken seriously as a thinker."

In fact, as Chotiner so convincingly explains, Huffington's twelfth book, "is only the most recent example of [her] tireless ability to inhabit different places on the political spectrum," where she reigns as a noisily progressive "player [who] now reigns supreme in cyberspace and in the Beltway, even if she is not "intellectually consistent."

Be that as it may, he shrewdly identifies two consistent strains in her writing, which are her "limp spirituality" and her "frequent and caustic criticism of the Fourth Estate," by which I think he is referring to us ink-stained wretches who don't even know how to tweet or Twitter. Once again, she has to fall back on Kierkegaard -- and remember, he's Danish, not Greek: "In the world of opinion, newspapers demoralize men, by disaccustoming them from having an opinion of their own, and from developing themselves by carrying it in the face of opposition to the opinion of others, and by accustoming them, on the other hand, to have the guarantee for any opinion they may have that a significant number of men have the same opinion."

Naturally, Chotiner brings up Arianna's marriage in 1986 to wealthy California Congressman Michael Huffington, whom she divorced in 1997 before he announced that he was bisexual, after which "her columns also became increasingly, and shrewdly, non-partisan." And, of course, we all know that she briefly allied herself with Newt Gingrich while making "herself over as an enemy of power, a tribune of the people, an A-list populist," and even ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger in California's 2003 recall election.

Huffington's latest book, Chotiner astutely explains, "is less genuine and more tiresome." She is, he declares. "one of those writers who mistakes press criticism for the entirety of social and political criticism. Her condescension toward the press is endless: 'Someone please alert the media: not every issue fits into your cherished right/left paradigm. Indeed, that way of looking at the world is becoming less and less relevant -- and more and more obsolete. And more and more dangerous.'"

Right on, Chotiner. Tell it like it is. And your readers will only have to slog on for 3,136 more words to learn that you worked as an editor at The Huffington Post in 2007 for less than a month before you left "because of a misunderstanding over the nature of the position I was hired for." I'm sure there is no connection between your unhappy departure from HuffPost and your statement that "I have gone into this taxonomic detail to give a sense of the dizziness of the site, its attention-destroying cascades, its addiction to entertainment... and its adoration of celebrities."

Finally, FINALLY, you compared her to P. T. Barnum, writing that it may be "a mistake to hold Arianna Huffington to any real standard of intellectual or journalistic rigor. She is just an adventuress, ideologically and socially; an impresario, with a practiced eye for the main chance; a media phenomenon, which is among the thinnest phenomena of all; a nimble brand."

God, I wish you'd written that about me.

Comments

[freshnotbitter]

I've seen the New Republic on library shelves since I was a teen and I still don't know what its purpose is.

I read the entire article Chotiner wrote and I still don't know.

I made the same political journey Huffy did and I think it is the same one that Teddy Roosevelt took in leaving the Repubicans and starting his Progressive Party.

I wouldn't recommend reading the entire article Chotiner wrote because it doesn't say anything. I've never read anything in the New Republic that says anything. I still don't know what they do or why they exist. You can read the Reader's Digest or Harpers or Esquire or Newsweek or National Review and understand what the publication is doing but if you read an article in the New Republic, you don't know anything more at the end than you did at the beginning.

[raker]

Oh, I get it. It's Arianna Huffington's fault the MSM are execrable and detested by the world. The Huffington Post made NBC Nightly News into a sh*tty shell of a news program, with its weather reports and viewer polls and feel-good stories but hardly any news. It's blogging that turned the White House Press Corps into lazy, dull stenographers hell bent on getting, not the story, but access. The news business and its apologists are loathsome.

[Unsui]

"She is just an adventuress, ideologically and socially; an impresario, with a practiced eye for the main chance;"

Cool.

[clevelandchick]

So what if she is an 'adventuress'....that's a bad thing?

This is my favorite blog because there is such a diverse group of writers and a great diversity of content: politicians, business folks, actors, musicians, poets, nobel laureates not to mention the many fabulous authors and journalists. Every topic under the sun is covered. You read stories, see video and essays on subjects you'd never see on the nightly news, in a newspaper or in most commercial magazines save Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair. I don't include the Nation, Prospect or Mother Jones because many of their writers publish essays on HP.

The New Republic has always been a conservative DLC rag. Now it's evident it's editors have serious jealousy issues has well. I love that Arianna pisses them off, keep up the good work girlfriend.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Who's Isac Chotiner? What's a New Repbulic??

Is this guy angry because he's not the one telling me what my opinions are???

[mommadona]

Sounds like he's jealous...... *bling!

[NicoloM]

(cont)
Both the criticism in the NR (which I only skimmed) and the response of A.H. seems fairly superficial. In some instances the New Republic is insightful, but like all organizations limited in structure by the technology of the past to a hierarchy of authority, and the journalists who have dedicated a career to carving out a position in this hierarchy, Mr. Chotiner and the NR are probably threatened by the changes which are afoot. It is more a sign of the first personality that Arianna seems to morph and change, and a characteristic of the later that journalists pine for the old days of absolute dominance. To the extent that Ms. Huffington has faith in vague spirituality is more akin to the first, than the rigid orthodoxy of a god which neatly fits a single book. That she is Greek is an aspect of a global interplay of ideas, contrasted to a fundamentalist belief in a “chosen people.” Finally, the personal nature of the criticism belies the fear of the power of technology and human curiosity to evolve new systems for the emergence of the vast power of human thought, which evokes the fear of the tower of Babel in concrete thinkers who prefer simple answers even if wrong.
Then why did these two articles feel so much like a tiff between reality show contestants?

[NicoloM]

In the vast range of human personality types one edge is represented by people who are comfortable in incorporating divergent information, who actively question and are curious. On the other edge of the range are people who are uncomfortable with any uncertainty, ambiguity or disparity of information, so much so, that they are willing to sacrifice independent thinking for dogma, willing to submit to authority which is certain and unambiguous, and prefer the polarity typical of the fundamentalist mind. The first personality type is more apt to change and to evolve in ideas and opinions as they progress. The second clings to the comfort and certainty of the past. Crude labels (like Dem or Rep, conservative or liberal) often are an expression of the recognition of this range, but are in themselves polarities counterproductive to deeper understanding of these patterns. In certain respects patterns in the world around us are replicated on various scales, the rivulet is a fractal of a stream, is a fractal of the tributary is a fractal of the river, etc. The same patterns are present across broader concepts like evolution, the evolution and functioning of the brain, and evolution and functioning of societies. In the human brain the polarity of the certainty of threat and response, is a lower function, while the contemplation of disparate information is a higher function, as is the same mass behavior of groups and societies.

[MyThought]

Typical right wing type - can't win on merit - have to attack and tear the body to shreds.

[larry278]

How is Ms Huffington's book selling? Sometimes that tells if a book is factual. Ms Huffington is in the news business. Accuracy is important in the news business.
BTW, the word, zeitgeist, has appeared in HP's blogs.

[AnnfromCA]

I can't believe you actually decided to define siren.

[writerjohnny]

I can't believe you actually decided to comment on his decision to define siren.

[mairs]

I identified with his impulse to do it. The amount of people who know who the sirens were is probably dwindling.

[borisgoodenough]

And the number of people who know correct usage is also on the decline.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

As opposed to car alarm?

[SCG]

I guess they've given up on ignoring her? lol

[propitiousmoment]

I believe that's spelled "empiricism."

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

I graduated from a public high school and even I know the meaning of the words empericism, taxonomic and zeitgeist. Isaac Chotiner obviously isn't all that bright.

[JScott]

I guess he went to the Ayn Rand/Wm Buckley school of writing----write ina style it difficult to read and use lotsa long words.
But then it's typical of the RWNM

[LMPE]

Whatevuh