The Noodge Report

So, how's The Huffington Post doing?

To be fair, Arianna deserves credit for making conservative scribes feel welcome at her new venture, and partner in crime Andrew Breitbart so far has done an admirable job of rounding up worthwhile columns from the likes of Danielle Crittenden, John Fund, David Frum, and Byron York. That said, like most Democrat efforts of late to get their message out "The Huffington Post" seems born of the resentment that the other side had the idea first combined with the hope that they could do it better. Well, good luck. In addition to laying the foundation for the blogosphere "The Drudge Report" receives over ten million hits a day, came this close to bringing down a corrupt U.S. president, and…oh yeah, regularly sets the agenda for the mainstream media. That is, when the mainstream media isn’t busy denouncing it as biased or inaccurate. I seem to recall Dan Rather of CBS News being particularly hard on "The Drudge Report."

Liberal Hollywood’s favorite Greek’s forum offered few surprises during its first few weeks other than a resounding silence from no-shows like David Geffen and Warren Beatty, both of whom Arianna repeatedly claimed were “on board” while promoting her new liblog’s debut to potential readers and, more importantly, investors. Sadly, Larry Gelbart has participated, and the TV legend’s desperately unfunny, pun-laden offerings to date have incited at least one former admirer to declare, “This guy wrote M*A*S*H*?”

So how’s "The Huffington Post" doing so far? Reviews of Arianna’s Drudge homage have been decidedly mixed, ranging from, “Boy, does that thing stink”, to, “The what?” After weeks of earnest hype and bold predictions of a new direction in the national conversation "The Huffington Post"’s debut was widely regarded, to put it mildly, as something of a let-down.

Which, given the Post’s genesis, isn’t particularly surprising. Arianna pitched this latest elaborate ploy to write off her cocktail parties as a business expense in terms of it being a "group blog," which is another way of calling it a personal journal-by-committee with all the charm, originality and integrity that that implies. Others describe it as a virtual think tank, although judging from what "The Huffington Post" has trotted out so far it feels mostly like a groupthink tank.

Apart from its larcenous origins and hit-or-miss content the other glaring weakness of "The Huffington Post" is that it’s pretty much what sources like N.P.R., the A.P., and most TV networks already offer: a conventional left-of-center perspective with a few conservative voices tossed in for window dressing. Contributors of note so far include Walter Cronkite (who helpfully declared the Vietnam War un-winnable in 1969, thus spoiling the ending for millions who thought that still to be determined), Gary Hart (who's been reduced to offering his written insights at no charge), and someone named Laurie David, who I gather is married to a famous person. We’re still waiting for that first, promised posting from Maggie Gyllenhaal, who recently became the latest Hollywood figure to blame the United States for the 9/11 attacks.

The Left's been coasting on fumes for so long now I doubt there's much they can do besides fail spectacularly at this point.