It is going to be really fun for me to watch as the Huffington Post suffers the backlash from Arianna’s opportunistic ways. I don’t really hate the woman or anything, but several months ago I did a little research on her and found out a lot of very interesting things. I have to give thanks to Grant in Texas for the awesome links to some stories I hadn’t seen. I’ve been sitting on most of the information I found about her, it’s not like anyone couldn’t find it themselves if they know how to use Google. I may write more in the days to come, but it looks like her house of cards is starting to topple on it’s own. From a story at The Raw Story…
Adbusters magazine set out to unite those disaffected former supporters of Arianna Huffington’s flagship site by suggesting they use social media to promote alternatives.
“Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists,” a post at Adbusters begins. “She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she’s cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.”
But the Huffington Post is not Arianna’s to sell. It is ours: the lefty writers and readers, environmentalism activists and anti-corporate organizers who flooded the site with 25 million visits a month. So we’re going to take it back.
We’ll stop going to her site. And we’ll stop blogging for her too. Then we’ll give birth to an alternative to AOL’s HuffPo by using the #huffpuff hash tag to tell the world about our favorite counter-culture websites and indie blogs.
“We are the ones who built the Huffington Post. And now we will be the ones who will huff & puff it down,” Adbusters concluded.
If I were a liberal blogger who was used by her, I’d be just a little bit pissed at this new deal. I hope that this backlash builds momentum and the real story of Arianna Huffington will finally be told. MSNBC deserves a lot of blame in my opinion, they helped to build her up as a “liberal” and constantly refer to the Huffington Post as a liberal or progressive website. She could always count on MSNBC to help promote her brand, I wonder if they are getting a cut from the deal just like all those liberal bloggers who provided content to her for free. I have a feeling that comments like the one below are only going to piss off those used and abused bloggers even more. She is unbelievable. Just a little bit of schadenfreude going on in this bloggers brain…
Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, had been trying to downplay the importance of partisan politics after the announcement.
“We don’t see ourselves as left,” Huffington told Politico. “And I think it’s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that’s happening as a right-left issue is missing what’s happening, and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed.”
She’s done with us liberals now, she cashed in. On to the next group of rubes, she’s already been trying to attract the Tea Party folks with her recent book that is nothing but platitudes and populist opportunism. What was it that P.T. Barnum said?
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
I am totally not surprised by her move but being someone whose been off and on her site I will say I’ll probably still go mainly because I’m not a huge leftist. I actually could care less if anyone goes and becomes a corporation. Your right about her being a fraud though.
I was watching Ed Shultz about Obama’s Commerce speech and was happy to see that he agreed with it up to the point he brought these two ‘guests.’ I was angry as they ranted and raved than he showed some lame ad that said he wanted to be held accountable when he meets with lobbyists. Ed was simply playing the fall guy pretending to defend Obama but in reality cowing down and bowing to these idiotic women.
It was sickening and not the only example. The raves by Cenk were far worse in my opinion by just the tidbit that I saw. I actually bashed Cenk very hard on youtube and said what a phony he was. Got in an argument with the idiotic youtube viewers more than a couple of times.
Just kind of pissed about how the left seems to be no better as far as I’m concerned than the right.
You know sometimes I wonder if Cenk, Ed and Dylan acting so bulldogish towards the president might actually help the president? People get defensive when someone they voted for gets attacked, for the most part. And if your viewers are smart enough to figure things out for themselves, they can often see through the bias and it backfires on them. I used to be an MSNBC 24/7 type of guy, especially during the 2008 campaign season. But just like with not going to the Huffington Post, that’s how I can really show them my disappointment…stop giving them the clicks they so crave. And with MSNBC, I’ve stopped watching Morning Joe…I do like Chuck and Savanna’s show though.
Dylan told Jane Hamsher this afternoon that Obama and Biden wanting to bring the nation “high-speed” rail was just “MORONIC”. He thinks the proposals out there now to reduce the debt are only like fleas on a dog. (equally blames Republicans AND Democrats).
Yes, Jeff, with Ed Schultz giving so much time for the anti-Obama rants of Laura Flanders of GRITtv and the other “progressive” basher, one came away from the cacaphony having lost all the positive points Ed had made about the president speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The far left ideologues hate conversation and compromise as much as the right-wing ideologues.
There is a split over at MSNBC over “high-speed” rail. Ratigan called it “MORONIC” earlier today, and Ed Schultz spends the first 15 minutes tonight preaching how it could put many Americans back to work. However, Schultz says the Republicans will oppose funding it as they want Obama to fail. Does Ratigan want Obama to fail, too, I wonder?
High-speed rail makes sense in many parts of the USA. There has long been talk about building one here in Texas, a triangle between Houston, San Antonio/Austin/Waco to Dallas including College Station. A&M is most difficult to get to being in the middle of nowhere and passenger trains long ago quit going through a town named after a railroad station! A&M is one of our state’s top research universities, but only reachable by a very slow Greyhound or an expensive prop-plane commute plane that makes few flights per day.
Right now it takes nearly an hour during rush hour to get from downtown Houston to George Bush Airport, then there is an hour or two going through TSA and the boarding cattle-call, then an hour flight to Dallas, then another hour to get to downtown Dallas or Fort Worth. A fast train would even be faster, cheaper, go from city center to city center and not burn so much fossil fuel!
BTW, just went to Google to see if there was anything up about Ratigan’s remark and found my Grant in Houston post here at Extreme Liberal at the top of the Google page!
Google has been good to me. :) I love them too.
I was not surprised she sold out her liberal bloggers because I’ve always known and said she is not a progressive. I don;t think she’s a conservative either – she is just a money hungry opportunist looking for monetary gain and self-agrandizement.
I was disgusted by her endless Obama bashing and could not understand why people referred to her rag as progressive.
The Huffpost never misses an opportunity to bash the president and cast him in the worst possible light.
Ms Huffington also seems a bit cozy with Teabaggers and she often says they have legitimate anger . How a racist movement could ever be legitimate is beyond me.
When I did try to post comments there, all my anti-Sarah Palin and anti-tea party comments were censored.
interesting about Dylan Ratigan opposing this… Doesn’t make since because things like high speed rails, clean energy, etc are things that democrats and progressives usually support. Interesting that Dylan RATigan believes the idea is moronic, so many countries across the planet have high speed rails and a lot more cleaner energies, etc. If I didn’t know any better I would say that RATigan is a fake progressive. I think Ratigan doesn’t want any of the democrats to be successful because if they were he’d be out of a job.
Brian Williams, on MSNBC commenting on the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, sort of dissed outlets like Huffington Post (the only one he actually named) for being most critical of President Bush over how he has been handling the Egyptian revolution, criticizing him for acting too slowly. IOW, who knows what kinds of negotiations have been occurring between the White House and Egypt. Too many want everything THEIR WAY…RIGHT NOW!!! Sign of an ideologue.
Thats very true.
Its sort of funny I went on huffington post and found an article written by a member of the Heritage foundation the other day. All too funny.
I know I’m changing the subject here a bit but I accepted the facts about Huffington Post, but the one site I wished to highlight is Democratic Underground I know i mention that site every time I rant about firebaggers.
It seems they get a small piece of information and those fuck wad posters go ape shit over it,I stop debating these people because they are left wing versions of the slime you find on Free Republic.
I personally believe those progressive bloggers that still support the president and still believes in the long term not that instant change should hold blogs like FireDog Lake,C&L and Democratic Underground accountable for their bullshit.
And if the worst comes in 2012 and Republicans regain power in the senate and the White House those pieces of trash on DU will be the main ones screaming about what that Republican President is doing.
I haven’t ever frequented that site unless I clicked on a link to it. It sounds like it would just piss me off.
What is pissing me off now is the mumbles about “the president needs to get out in front of the crisis in Egypt”. What in the hell does that even mean. The same immature people who don’t know how the fucking congress works also don’t know how foreign policy works, the nuance, the delicate balancing act between our country’s interests (oil…which affects our entire economy) and the need to promote democracy, which can be tricky too….hezbollah anyone?
People who aren’t qualified to talk about this nuanced stuff should not be allowed on my TV to spread misinformation and bullshit. The media needs to take some responsibility for what they put on the air. I’m not saying to censor them, they need to have better standards, sources, confirmation on stuff before they start running with it.
End rant!
I spent last night fighting with some DUers I learned something they really don’t like it when someone refers to them as the self-righteous ones. And if you want a quick raise in your blood pressure swing by DU someone today posted a story saying Dennis Kucinich would like to see a primary challenge to President Obama.
It seems people on the left are dead set on reliving the last eight years with another dip shit brain dead Republican president and a corrupt Republican congress.
I forgot to add this in my response post to E.L.. Extreme tell Angry Black Lady if she sees a sudden up tick of firebag trolls it’s my fault because I cited two post from her blog to illustrate a larger point.
I know I wouldn’t want to be a troll and suffer the wrath of ABL. :)
Oh, now I’m going to go over and be an instigator….call them a bunch of self-righteous hippies…or something good like that.
I have to remind myself frequently that the general public doesn’t pay attention like we do and when election time rolls around, if the economy is chugging along, they will re-elect him. I often ask people if they know who Jane Hamsher is or Cenk Uygur or Dylan Ratigan or whatever and to be honest, I don’t think anyone ever has…so when I get all bent about them I remind myself that they are a small lot.
Don’t you think it is a matter of them hating for 8 years and now they own that hatred and need to keep perpetuating it? Hell, I bet a lot of them had their hate going on for Clinton too, so they may have 16 years of hating as their basis.
Granted the average person wouldn’t know who these people are but if I worked at the RNC I would be cranking out ads entitled “See even his own people think he sucks” and people who don’t pay attention or don’t feel like researching the information for themselves will see those ads and go damn why would I vote for him when the people that claim to support him don’t like him?
I’m angry too but my rage is direct to the people who’s trying to crash this country into the side of a mountain not the guy who’s trying to land the plane.
I hate to think this about other progressives but I’m really starting to think the Cenk Uygurs and Jane Hamsters of that end of the progressive media want the Republicans to win next year because it’s better for their business.
Former Sec. of Defense, Republican William Cohen, PRAISED Obama’s handling of the Egypt situation, liking that our State Department worked behind the scenes but letting the Egyptian people define their own future. The World is tired of the USA meddling everywhere.
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns of the Bush Administration told Cenk Uygur that we shouldn’t compare this revolution to toppling Saddam Hussein. Yeah, the Egyptian Revolution was over in 18 days, and the few deaths were the result of Mubarak thugs. And best of all, the USA didn’t interfere militarily.
The Iraq “Revolution” cost the USA a trillion dollars, killed tens of thousands of innocents and nearly 5000 American soldiers lost their lives…tens of thousands maimed. The USA bombed and destroyed much of the infrastructure, and left behind a still fragile government.
It’s pretty amazing what can be accomplished with diplomacy. I remember back to 2002 and 2003 screaming at my television that they were taking us to war for no goddamn reason. When Colin Powell, who I respect, testified before the United Nations Security Council I screamed at the TV that it was bullshit, those fuckers made that shit up.
Don’t get me going….:)
I’ve always thought William Cohen was a decent guy, but he wouldn’t fit anywhere within the Republican Party these days. They’d run him out on a rail.
Yeah, just saying something positive about Obama or a Democrat is political death for a Republican.
right on! I can’t stand the women. Here we’ve been thru 8 years of republican rule and finally finally got a smart decent democrat in the wh. And to get the wh and some of the swing states you have to appear to center as well. All she does is bash everything he does. I was beginning to wonder if she was on the faux payroll. I quit reading huffpost long ago due to this.