"12 Reasons Why The AOL-Huffington Post Merger Is Going Down In Flames."

Is this believable or the result of various disgruntled employees leaking their side of the story?

"Mr. Schwarzenegger might never have been elected were it not for his wife..."

"... Ms. Shriver gave a passionate speech on behalf of her husband in the final days of his campaign for governor after The Los Angeles Times published a series of stories painting him as womanizer and groper."

Paragraph 7 of the NYT story about the breakup of Arnold and Maria. Now, why doesn't the NYT, with its fabulous archive of old stories, link to those old "womanizer" reports that were whipped out at the last minute to try to preserve the power of the Democratic governor?

I'll do it for them. October 3, 2003, "THE CALIFORNIA RECALL: THE LEADING REPUBLICAN; Sexual Accusations Prompt an Apology By Schwarzenegger":

Mr. Schwarzenegger's attitude toward women has been an issue since the start of his campaign. But the new accusations, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's reply, set off a maelstrom of protest from his critics, including women's groups, Democrats and Arianna Huffington, who dropped out of the race this week but had repeatedly clashed with Mr. Schwarzenegger during a debate last week.

Oh! Arianna was in the center of the maelstrom!

''I consider his campaign a very expensively produced masquerade,'' Ms. Huffington, who was running as an independent, said, "the question is will the mask be removed before the election or after. I believe what this story is going to do is really bring to question this big issue of trust and credibility. If his word and image are consistently proven to be false, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.''

The Los Angeles Times reported that three of the women said Mr. Schwarzenegger had grabbed their breasts. Another said he reached under her skirt. A fifth said he tried to strip off her bikini in a hotel elevator. The sixth said Mr. Schwarzenegger pulled her to his lap and asked if she was experienced in a particular sexual act. The accusations covered a 25-year period, ending in 2000....

"Sarah Palin Can't Name Most Influential Journalist," crows HuffPo, trying to make Palin look dumb...

... and inadvertently making journalism look lame. Because who can name the most influential journalist? I can't. Seems like maybe you have to be a journalist to think in such terms. (Ask me who the most influential law professor is.)

Here's the video with Sarah Palin supposedly embarrassing herself:



Those White House Correspondents' Dinner "attendees" who "had no problem coming up with answers" were journalists giving laughably self-interested answers like "my boss, Arianna Huffington." And there were plenty of attendees who couldn't come up with an answer or who changed the question to "my favorite journalist."

(Ask me who the most influential law professor is, and my answer will say something about me as I decide to promote my own school, suck up to some particular individual, highlight somebody obscure, or drivel about how there are so many wonderful law professors.)

Arianna Huffington "has always been on the move ideologically..."

"... from her early squabbles with feminism to her role as a minister with the new-age Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness, from her membership in Newt Gingrich's brain trust to her stint as populist activist - all before her greatest act, the Huffington Post."

Says Dana Milbank "with admiration."

Huffington deserves every one of those millions she'll be paid by AOL for creating this online sensation. She was once derided as "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus" because of her many well-connected friends, but Huffington has earned her place as one of the extraordinary personalities of our time: an entrepreneur and writer who is always chasing the next big idea, wherever it is on the ideological spectrum.

Good for her. We need some extraordinary personalities for our time.

"Yes, she’s got political views, but gosh, look how political views have worked for Fox."

"There’s certainly the opportunity to create a much more powerful liberal voice in the country. The fact that it hasn’t been done yet, doesn’t mean it can’t be done."

And since you paid $315 million for it...

Remember when it was fun to mock Arianna and her little HuffPo project?

Begun with $1 million, it's now being sold to AOL for $315 million, with Arianna reigning as as president and editor in chief.

By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business.

What difference does it make? AOL as a brand meant something to me in the 1990s, but not now. Who cares whether AOL retains a semblance of political neutrality? In any case, mainstream media always feels pretty liberal, so why would anyone really notice. Now, that quote is from the NYT, so... think about it. The NYT would like to be the big news site that looks neutral (but satisfies liberals). HuffPo is the raging competition, which needs to be put in its place.

Rachel Maddow thinks she's so sharp and funny that...

... she fails to see that other people are sharp and funny too and mocks a satire as if it were serious. Embarrassing. At least she humbly acknowledges the mistake... unlike some people:

Maddow's humility sparkles in comparison to The Huffington Post's, which upon being duped by ChristWire last August, simply erased parts of the article that showed they weren't in on the joke. In that instance, ChristWire had published an advice guide for women on how to tell if their husbands are gay.

HuffPo introduces a divorce section.

Collecting lots of news and opinion about divorce. Is that wrong?

It's something Arianna cooked up with Alessandra and Nora:

One morning, [NYT tv critic Alessandra Stanley] and I headed off on a long walk down the beach, and we ended up talking a lot about our divorces.

Two divorced women went out walking, and what do you think they talked about? Philosophy?

When we got back to Nora [Ephron]'s, we recounted some of our conversation, at which point she told us that she had actually been thinking that HuffPost's next section should be devoted to all things divorce.

Over breakfast, Nora came up with the tag line for the section -- "Marriage comes and goes but divorce is forever" -- and Alessandra offered up what has become our inaugural divorce aphorism (the first in a series): "His happiness is a small price to pay for my freedom!" As Nora says, "far too much attention is paid to aphorisms about falling in love and not nearly enough to those about falling out of love."

So, a divorce section, eh? How long do you think they will be able to stick with it?

Lisa Birnbach says:

Whatever happened to sticking it out? That's what most people did in the 20th century, if they found themselves less than happily married. Preppy couples were discreet, especially if there were children involved.

And blah blah blah endlessly, about your divorce. Or maybe not endlessly. Maybe pack it in when it doesn't seem so amusing anymore.

"I know Arianna doesn’t like it. But I like taupe."

Obama stands up to his critics in the press.

"Not backing down... President Obama has formally renominated five judges whose candidacies were previously derailed by Senate Republicans."

Sam Stein reports. (Is "reports' the right word?)

Obama's decision to renominate these figures demonstrates that the White House is not just willing, but eager to spotlight the remarkably slow pace of its judicial confirmations...

The administration has been left largely powerless to move Senate Republicans, save for somewhat-idle threats to keep Congress in session while individual nominations are debated. But they are finding more and more allies in their frustration from prominent judicial and political figures. On Monday, the American Constitution Society began circulating a letter signed by a group of former federal court judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, urging the Senate to take immediate action on languishing nominations.

Former federal court judges appointed by... Republican presidents? Surely, this is impressively neutral support for the President...  or so I will believe when we have a Republican President facing foot-dragging Democratic Senators and there's an equivalent letter signed by former federal court judges appointed by  Democratic Presidents.

Things that didn't meet the Huffington Post standards.

"$100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tape" gets attention via Memeorandum,  but HuffPo has deleted it.

Newsbusters calls attention to the writer's bio:

Beau Friedlander is a writer living in Brooklyn. He was the editor-in-chief of Air America until it closed in 2010...

And yet people wonder why Air America didn't cut it.

"It's time for traditional media companies to stop whining."

Said Arianna Huffington to the trad media types who don't like what the internet has done to their business. She thinks they ought to quit complaining that sites like hers are using the news they produce and be grateful that her site is sending them traffic.

"If you've ever wanted to explore the world of Wal-Mart but don't live near one, this site is for you."

"Everyone at these stores seems to be topless, pantsless, toothless or all of the above."

HuffPo sniffs (in a piece about various websites HuffPo readers might want to stoop to read).

"It is because I love Alaska this much... that I feel it is my duty to avoid the unproductive, typical, politics as usual, lame duck session..."

"How does that benefit you? No, with this decision now, I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right, for truth. And I have never felt like you need a title to do that."

Here's the transcript — as printed in Huffington Post, missing innumerable commas and periods, because you wouldn't want to interfere with the incoherent-rant feeling HuffPo readers crave when the speaker is dumb, crazy Sarah.

Let's watch the whole thing:





ADDED: The Politico's headline is "Sarah Palin resigns, blasts press, 'starlets.'" Now, here's the text in the speech with the word "starlets":

Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this with new leadership in this area especially, encouraging new leadership... got to stiffen your spine to do what's right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you're going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here's how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets, they use Alaska as a fundraising tool for their anti-second amendment causes. Stand strong, and remind them patriots will protect our guaranteed, individual right to bear arms, and by the way, Hollywood needs to know, we eat, therefore we hunt.

In the effort to make Palin look bad, Politico exposes itself as a poor (or dishonest) reader. Palin doesn't "blast" "starlets" at all. She says that "They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets..." Who are "they"? "Anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood." She's talking about powerful media elites, not the "delicate, tiny, very talented" young people they use to convey their message.

It's compelling when a beautiful woman (Palin) seems to criticize other beautiful women (the starlets), so it's important to get it straight. Palin is — or at least appears to be — conveying her own message, but the starlets she criticizes are — as she puts it — used by others. Also, the starlets are "delicate" and "tiny," but Palin is... oh, maybe she too is delicate and tiny! But she is minimizing them, both in their individual agency and in their size. Now, there's implicit criticism in there, but she is blasting Hollywood generally, not the starlets. She's needling the starlets a bit.

"Obama's Golf Shorts: Should Grown Men Wear Shorts? (PHOTOS, POLL)."

HuffPo gets in on what has long been a big topic here at Althouse. (Click the "men in shorts" tag below. And read what I said in the comments here about the guy seated next to me on the airplane yesterday.)

Here you see our President dressed for golf the way PGA Tour members are forbidden to dress. (Can you even picture Tiger Woods in shorts? No. And you're not supposed to.)



Come on! You're not a little kid! In fact, you are the President of the United States. Presidents golf in long pants!



IN THE COMMENTS: John Stodder says:

The reason I disagree with Ann on shorts on men is that I don't think it is a man's job to look attractive all the time, especially when engaged in leisure pursuits. Women do need to try harder in this area than men, and that might be unfair, but it won't do to try to apply the same attractiveness-at-all-times standard to both sexes.

The president, however, is never engaged in leisure pursuits, even when he is taking a break, so long as there is a camera anywhere nearby. So he does have a higher standard to reach. Higher yet because he's an avowed metrosexual.

But above all, if you wear shorts, you should not be nervously pulling at the seam to enclose it around the thigh as Obama seems to be doing. If there is any danger of your shorts exposing your beet salad to the world, they're either too short or too loose.

Briefly displayed: a video of Sarah Palin, in her Miss Alaska bathing suit, was a brief internet sensation.

I missed it, but I see Andrew Sullivan had it along with Huffpo, both without significant comment. Hot Air has it with the comment: "Fun and humanizing for most of us, fun and humiliating for media types already given to comparing her to Miss Teen South Carolina."

"Humiliating for media types" is ambiguous, and I realize that Hot Air means that those media types think she is being humiliated, but when I first read that I thought he meant that the media type were humiliating themselves, which is what I would say. Do these people seriously want to suggest that all of the young women who participate in beauty pageants are being humiliated? What snobbery! What prudery! And I bet they look like hell in a bathing suit.

Really, what is the point of thinking this old video means anything at all?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan posts "Fighting The Power: An alternative version of the pageant video. As often as they try to remove it, the people will replace it." Does Sullivan have any feeling for how creepy it seems for him to exult over his power to continue spying at the woman's body? I would like to hear him explain the point of this.

"At Off the Bus, because they're not part of the professional gaggle, they can come up with their own views of what's happening..."

About that blogger who got Bill Clinton to call Todd Purdum a "scumbag"... and 2,500 other blogger-reporters boosted by Huffington Post.

Mayhill Fowler says she never planned to ask Bill Clinton the question that unleashed a decidedly unpresidential tirade....

Fowler had her tape recorder going when [Barack Obama] made his ill-fated remarks about frustrated small-town residents turning to guns, God or anti-immigrant sentiments....

Mary Katherine Ham, a conservative blogger, says that while she would insist on identifying herself, "politicians need to learn that anyone can break news, and citizens who run into you -- even if you're not writing for the Huffington Post -- can post it anywhere."

In an e-mail, Fowler says she has come to realize that her presence "flummoxes some longtime journalists -- because suddenly here I am, unpaid but as a consequence with much more freedom to find out what's going on out there, and writing for a new and encroaching media that is a Wild Wild West of lawlessness."

A Wild Wild West of lawlessness — otherwise know as a marketplace of ideas.