You see me shinin, lit up with diamonds as I stay grindin. Uh-huh.
I have only met Arianna Huffington once. I remember it vividly but my guess is she doesn’t remember it much at all, which says volumes about both of us. The scene was surreal. Huffington and I were in Larry Flynt’s office in Los Angeles, participating in an experimental online talk show Larry was trying to distribute over the Internet. Our topic for the moment was gun control: I was conflicted while Huffington was violently opposed to guns, citing their danger to children, which she thought should over-rule any constitutional argument. I made a point and she replied with the motherhood card, “Well you obviously have never had children.” Point and match for Huffington. Game over.
But I had children. Back then I was the father of two sons, one of whom had died in my arms only a few months before. That memory was still too vivid for me to even respond to Huffington, who took my silence as capitulation, and maybe it was. She easily threw her kids into the battle while I couldn’t do the same with mine.
Maybe she sensed my weakness.
That was long before the Huffington Post was even thought of, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I read this week that AOL was buying the blog for $315 million. What AOL is buying, primarily, is Arianna Huffington in her role as media baron (baroness?) in the Fleet Street tradition, and it is a perfect fit. Huffington is at heart a female Rupert Murdoch, she just came to it too late in life. Like Murdoch she is all about taking a position and relentlessly pushing it to attract like-minded readers and advertisers. The story is everything. Well that and the money.
Did I mention that, inspired by Huffington, this blog, too, is for sale? By her metrics it’s worth $20 million, but I’d take a tenth of that.
related { Barry Ritholtz | AOL-Huffington Post: Why the Heavy Breathing? }
