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HOLLYWOOD HUFFED
“Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere,” gushed the NY Times about Arianna Huffington’s star-stacked superblog (which today seems almost completely starless; Greg Gutfeld, anyone? Joshua Zeitz? Timothy Greenfield-Sanders?). The LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke believes Huffington’s “next level” is oblivion:
Judging from Monday’s horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has undergone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself. What her bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree right-to-left conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn’t accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This website venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it’s the disastrous clone of Tina Brown’s Talk, JFK Jr.’s George or Maer Roshan’s Radar.
No matter what happens to Huffington, it’s clear Hollywood will suffer the consequences. It seems like some sick hoax.
Actually, as Doug Cox writes to point out, the Huffington hoax site is pretty good.
(Via Mark Bahnisch, who also links to an unenthusiastic Village Voice review)
UPDATE. Arianna is this week’s official jackass! Read the entire announcement.
The NY Times hopes and prays the Huffing thing will be the “next level” in blogging—to supersede, replace, outclass the blogs which are checking the MSM. The NY Times would like Arianna to snob-factor the blogsophere right out. Dream on, Pinch. Of course Pinch Sulzberger, who has wanted to give the Old Gray Lady NYT an “alternative newspaper” sensibility, ends up fueling it with snot every time.
The problem was, of course, that she boasted about it and gave it all this hype, as if web sites with multiple authors were some rare, strange, and wonderful invention that would cure the common cold. But celebrities keep doing dumb things like that*; for instance, people have been writing novels for centuries, but every time someone in today’s no-brains hypeworld—say an actor—decides to try his or her hand at writing there’s all this fuss, as if they’d just discovered a new continent, and nine times out of ten it’s a disappointing load of piffle that wouldn’t even have made it as far as the slush pile if Famous Star’s name hadn’t been on the manuscript. I mean, does anyone remember when Ethan Hawk wrote a novel? How about Jewel’s poetry? See what I mean?
*And unfortunately usually raking in loads of cash, at least during the first hype-flood. I wonder how much cash was wasted on the Huffingcrap site?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 05 13 at 08:31 PM • permalinkSorry to all the Ethan Hawke and Jewel fans whose feelings I’ve singed. You can read some of Jewel’s fine works here, for example:
I have strong shoulders
I have olive skin
I have a Swiss face I
borrowed from my grandmother
I have long nails on my right hand
which break regularly
My little toe is strange
I write
I used to make wreaths from dandelions
I brush my hair before bed
I cheated on tests
I faked flirtatious French accents
But I still have gold skin
and my nails still break
and I probably won’t always have
strong shoulders
and I may not always write
But maybe I’ll start
making wreaths
from dandelions again(Okay, first she had “olive” skin, then it was “still gold”, not to mention she “borrowed” her face “from [her] grandmother” which explains the masklike quality—but never mind! Poetic license and all that!)
And Ethan Hawke’s opus can still be had from Amazon.com. Here is a sample of the review:
Sure he can act (and direct), but can he write? Readers and critics remained undecided after the publication of Hawke’s first novel, The Hottest State, but most will respond with an encouraging “yes” to his enjoyable second novel, which melds believable youthful introspection to a catchy road-novel plot. Jimmy Heartsock, AWOL from the army, and his pregnant girlfriend, Christy, are the young couple caught between love and disillusionment whose path to self-discovery is punctuated by passion ("This girl had a friggin’ fireball for a heart") as well as endearing quirkiness.
“Friggin’ fireball.” Well, I take back everything I said about lame celebrity pseudo-novels: we’ve got ourselves our very own Victor Hugo here.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 05 14 at 12:28 AM • permalinkSo Huffington’s site hasn’t done well so far. Well that is dissapointing.
What with the loss of ABC watch last NYE (if ever uncle was needed, it is now!), and the professor silent for almost a month, things were starting to look like the blogosphere was growing up!
At least I could have got my jollies excoriating some pretentious snot used to a life surrounded by toadies and flunkies.There is still hope , of course. Perhaps we should bombard the fan sites of such intellectual giants as gwyneth asking her to come to poor huffie’s rescue and save the day?
Andrea, I recall reading somewhere that the blog either cost U.S $500,000 or that Huffington raised that amount for it.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 05 14 at 04:47 AM • permalinkGod knows why a blog would cost that much, since anyone can start one for just about zip. Oh, excuse, me, Huffie wouldn’t be blogging herself, would she? She’d hire someone to do that!
Andrea, how about applying for the job? Spleenville Goes To Hollywood! What a great movie idea!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 05 14 at 06:18 AM • permalinkI noted the lameness of Huffablogthe other day. You have to wonder why Lileks even tried to mock it…
[PS. I HATE the effing log in system to post comments here. Can’t you just use a “type the word in the box” system if you’re trying to keep out the pinheads...{and, no, not pinheads like me ... you’ve almost managed to keep me out}]
Posted by William Young on 2005 05 14 at 09:28 AM • permalinkWhat Finke doesn’t understand about Arianna, when he calls her new website an unsurvivable disaster, is that Huffington is the female Donald Trump, in that she has no shame in being the biggest self-serving publicity hound out there, and is willing to do or say the wildest things to keep herself in the public spotlight, even if she’s a joke to 90 percent of the people out there.
Of course, if she hadn’t changed from conservative to liberal, she’d a be a joke to 99 percent of the people out there right now. But her shift allows Arianna to remain relevant among folks in the media, who are more willing to publicize her hair-brained liberal schemes and utterances than they would of if she had remained to the right of Tom DeLay politically.
melds believable youthful introspection to a catchy road-novel plot. Jimmy Heartsock, AWOL from the army, and his pregnant girlfriend, Christy, are the young couple caught between love and disillusionment whose path to self-discovery is punctuated by passion ("This girl had a friggin’ fireball for a heart") as well as endearing quirkiness.
And this was “written” in what, 1970?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 14 at 11:24 AM • permalinkHow do you go from right to left anyway?
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 05 14 at 11:48 AM • permalinkRichard: well, Ethan Hawke was born in 1970; like many actors and other entertainers, he may not have progressed mentally much beyond his infancy.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 05 14 at 02:17 PM • permalinkAging Gamer — Just stand still and watch the left vanish up its own ass without you.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 14 at 03:32 PM • permalinkI hope Huffington’s blog survives. I hope all the Hollywood insiders and celebrities keep on giving us their keen insights into moral engagement with the world around us.
And then I hope they all go out and campaign for Democratic candidates.
Again.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 14 at 04:07 PM • permalinkDoh! The $500,000 figure is in the ‘LA Weekly’ link in Tim’s post.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 05 14 at 07:15 PM • permalinkI’ve only seen one post over there, probably won’t be back.
But that one was a humdinger!
Seems Hilary Rosen, formerly chief lawyer for RIAA, now finds that the implementation of DRM for which she fought is being used to (Surprise!) destroy her consumer concerns. And in her plaint for help, she forgets the other monstrosity she pushed for, the DCMA, won’t allow anyone to help.
Gee, who would ever have thought that a seller of music, Apple, would not only not allow her to play music purchased from Apple on non-Apple hardware, but would even make it difficult to play music purchased from a store other than Apple’s?
Biter bitten.Posted by John Anderson on 2005 05 15 at 02:44 AM • permalink
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