Friday, May 13, 2005
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.