Arianna Huffington: We Like Her



(image via peterhansen)

What is one to make of Arianna Huffington? She's astonishingly ambitious, yes; but she has talent to back it up (unlike, say, the blackhearted Andrew Fucking Cuomo). And she's clever (The Corsair smiles slyly). We have a soft spot in our hearts for the clever (And all things Greek). Our favorite social chronicler David Patrick Columbia of NYSocialDiary comes up with this interesting bit of Huffinton trivia:

"Last Friday night I had dinner with another mutual friend she and I share and Arianna once again came up. He hadn�t seen the Huffington Post. He had no idea. But he wasn�t surprised. He told me about an incident that occurred a number of years ago when Arianna was first making her way in New York. She had a pleasant apartment at 67th and Lexington. It wasn�t grand like so many of her very rich friends, but it was comme il faut.

"At that point Arianna was famous for being present at many a dinner table, but not as a hostess herself. By now she was acquainted with a large number of the Jet Set/Beautiful People/Tycoons and Courtesans. And artists and writers. She decided to bring some of them together. She gave a dinner 'in honor' of a very distinguished gentleman, so distinguished that people would drop everything just to be in attendance.

"That night, during the cocktail hour, one of the female guests � the wife of a very famous designer, and she herself known for her driving ambition and cleverness � slipped into Arianna�s dining room and had a look at the placement. Placement, (plahs-mon) if you didn�t know is considered one of the rarest of arts as the world gets rarer. Placement is political, just as it was with the Bourbons. Social yes, but political more.

"So, back to the dining room. Quickly assessing the placement, the designer�s wife, with feline agility, quietly but suddenly stopped in front of one place setting and, very quickly ('like three card monty' was how it was described by the single witness), switched two place cards.


"A few minutes later the dinner guests were invited in to dine. When the hostess, then Ms. Stassinopoulos, went to take her seat (that she had assigned herself) with the guest of honor in his proper place on her right, she discovered that her place had been switched. Designer Wife�s card was now in her place, with the guest of honor on her right. So, obviously� that left poor Arianna sitting with her guest of honor on her left and trumped by Designer�s Wife. Designer�s Naughty Wife. Wicked Wife. Hmmm �

"However, within moments, the charming, gracious hostess stood up, called her dinner guests to attention, and raised her glass to her Guest of Honor. She told the room that she knew that it was considered 'proper' for a guest of honor to be seated to the right of the hostess. But, she added, in this case, she seated her guest of honor to her left � because that was where her heart was � on her left side � and she wanted him to be closer to her heart.

"So take that Designer�s Wife. Arianna had laid out her case and flipped a petty social slight into an aphorism about human relations. 'She didn�t even need time to plan it; she just came out with it,' my friend recalled in the telling."

Okay. We like Arianna Huffington. There. The Corsair said it.

The full story on Arianna here (NYSocialDiary)