On Arianna Huffington and GW's Frat Days



Let's face it, The Corsair has been critical of Arianna Huffington in the past. Okay, we've fucked with her pretty harshly. But this LA Magazine story about her is pretty interesting, and, to be frank, The Corsair has always found Huffington to fascinating and charming enough to morph from a Conservative to a Liberal before our very eyes, albeit somewhat dangerous.

She's very Greek, with politics in her blood, and, as a Ugandan son of a diplomat who majored in philosophy and has a certain fondness for all things Greek and ancient, well, you can see how The Corsair could be intrigued. There is no question in any of her critics minds that Huffington is a darkly brilliant woman who probably would be in the Senate making deals in the backrooms if she were born an American male, but, uh, she's a little eccentric in her manner and, like people who are part of the Greek Upper Class, very personal in her attacks. My friend, the editor of the American Conservative, Taki Theodoracopoulos is the same way.

Remember her attack of Newt Gingrich's weight back in the days when Newtie was Speaker of the House after they had a falling out? Check out what she's up to now:

"ON A JULY EVENING SEVERAL DAYS BEFORE THE OPENING OF the Democratic Party's national convention in Boston, Arianna Huffington steers Dr. Justin A. Frank through a throng of people packing the hallway of her $7 million Brentwood home into the even more crowded living room. In tan Prada heels, black Armani slacks, and a lime green Valentino top whose plunging neckline shows off a chunky moonstone necklace, the 5-foot-11-inch Huffington towers over her companion. Not that Frank recedes into the background. White Italian suit worn just so, orange-and-purple-striped Etro shirt open at the neck, and all of it set off by a pair of ringtail lizard Lucchese cowboy boots, the professor of psychiatry at George Washington University is as flamboyant in appearance as the thesis his hostess has invited him to propound. Namely, President George W. Bush is not merely a man whose foreign policy is misguided and whose syntax is garbled. Rather he is, in clinical parlance, a paranoid megalomaniac.

"'This is a person who's got us to live out his nightmares,' Frank insists shortly after taking the microphone. 'This is a man who blew up frogs at the age of 12 and who branded the buttocks of frat pledges at Yale with a hot hanger. This is a man who's tried to manage internal chaos by externalizing it. Instead of learning from his experience, he has us living it.'"

Okay, just how did he come by this info? I have to leave the infinitely fascinating subject of Arianna Huffington to adress this. The Corsair has read all the bios and has never come across the exploding frog tidbit or the odd "hot hangar on the ass" chestnut. And how does this flamboyant dresser know that some shoe designer in Italy didn't use firecrackers on that stylish pair of "ringtail lizard Lucchese cowboy boots." And, does a man who wears ringtail lizard Lucchese cowboy boots really have the right to throw a brick at someone else's glass house? Or, criticize someone else's assplay?

Further, when did the President of the United States and leader of the free world have time to brand frat boys in the tushy with a hot hanger? And is this really what goes on at Skull and Bones in the Vault? And wouldn't that leave a lot of scarred little derriere's in the nation's power centers?

But enough of asses.