Arianna Huffington, the once—upon—a—time conservative commentator who headed left, has been desperate to keep her name before the public for years. Her candidacy for Governor of California became an embarrassing joke when she tried to horn in on Arnold Schwarzenegger's official filing of papers, succeded in knocling over the media's microphone stand, and went downhill from there.

Now, she has noticed that blogs are "hot," and so she is apparently putting big money behind an effort to build a brand name for herself: Huffington Post will be a group blog, with 250 some celebrity contributors. Running the site for her will be Andrew breitbart, formerly Matt Drudge's assistant in running his website.

The New York Times has swallowed Adrianna's PR barrage hook, line and sinker, just as it lavished incredible attention on Air America. Here is the breathless first line of an unintentionally hilarious story the former Newspaper of Record published:

Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere.

Wow! You see, Arianna is recruiting "brand name" people to write, many of them Hollywood celebrities or established writers, and a very few of them conservatives.

The story which follows is self—contradictory to a degree that any college newspaper editor would have caught, but which eluded the idologues at the Times.

Ms. Huffington said the site "won't be left wing or right wing [emphasis added]; indeed, it will punch holes in that very stale way of looking at the world."

but

Nora Ephron, one of the writers recruited, said,

In the Fox era, everything we can do on our side to even things out, [emphasis added] now that the media is either controlled by Rupert Murdoch or is so afraid of Rupert Murdoch that they behave as if they were controlled by him, is great."

Will the Huffington Post succeed? Arianna's track record indicates failure. But maybe if the New York Times continues to write positive stories, it will survive.

Hat tip: Joe Crowley

Thomas Lifson  4 25 05