Arianna Huffington
(born Arianna Stassinopoulos
, 15 July 1950) is a Greek-American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of The Huffington Post
.
In 2003 she ran as an independent candidate for Governor in the California recall election. [1]
In 2009, Huffington was named as number 12 in Forbes' first ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media. [2] She has also moved up to number 42 in the Guardian's Top 100 in Media List. [3]
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Early life
Huffington was born in
Athens,
Greece, the daughter of Konstantinos (a
journalist and management consultant) and Elli (nee Georgiadi) Stassinopoulos, and is the sister of Agapi (an author, speaker and performer). To this day, she speaks with a marked
Greek accent. She moved to
England at the age of 16 and attended
Girton College at
Cambridge University where in 1971 she was President of the
Cambridge Union Society, the third woman to hold the position, and graduated with a
BA (later to become an
MA in accordance with Cambridge's practice) in
economics in 1972.
After graduation, she moved to
London and lived with the journalist and broadcaster
Bernard Levin, whom she had met while the two were
panelists on the TV show
Face the Music
. In 1980 she left Levin and moved to the
United States, after he refused to marry her. After Levin's death in 2004, she called him "the big love of my life, […] a mentor as a writer, and a role model as a thinker".
[4] During these years and around the time of her involvement with
John-Roger's religious group, she was involved with Democratic politician and then-governor (currently Attorney General) of California,
Jerry Brown. It was during this time that Huffington (then Stassinopoulos) was first known as a liberal/left-wing/Democrat, the position she returned to once again in the post-90s following the right-wing years of the 1980s to late 1990s.
She met oil millionaire
Michael Huffington, a family friend of the Bushes, at a 1985 party hosted by
Ann Getty in
San Francisco. The couple were married in 1986 at a wedding paid for by Getty, who had declared that she needed to find Arianna a husband. They moved to
Washington, D.C., when he was appointed to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. They later established residency in
Santa Barbara, California, in order for him to run in 1992 as a
Republican for a seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives, which he won by a significant margin. He was a political
conservative on most issues. Arianna campaigned for her husband, courting religious conservatives, arguing for smaller government and a reduction in welfare. In 1994 he narrowly lost the race for the
U.S. Senate seat from
California to incumbent
Dianne Feinstein.
[5]
The couple divorced in 1997, and in 1998 Michael Huffington revealed that he was
bisexual.
[6] A 1999 magazine article claimed that Arianna Huffington "entered the marriage... with full knowledge of Michael Huffington's sexual interests in men".
[7] The financial terms of their divorce agreement remain undisclosed. Arianna Huffington chose to retain her former husband's surname, although she had been known as Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington during the period of her marriage.
Career
In the late 1980s, Huffington wrote several articles for
National Review
. In 1981, she wrote a biography of
Maria Callas,
Maria Callas — The Woman Behind the Legend
, and in 1996 a biography of
Pablo Picasso,
Picasso: Creator and Destroyer
. In 1996, Huffington and
liberal comedian Al Franken participated as "Strange Bedfellows"
[8] in
Comedy Central's coverage of the 1996 U.S. presidential election. For her work, she and the writing team of
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
were nominated for an
Emmy, for Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music Program. She has also made a few forays into acting with roles on shows such as
Roseanne
,
The L Word
,
Help Me Help You
, and the film
EdTV
.
[9]
Huffington's politics began changing in the late 1990s. A former "right winger", she moved noticeably to the left and now describes herself as a "progressive populist". During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Huffington opposed United States intervention in the crisis.
[10]
In 2000, she instigated the 'Shadow Conventions', which appeared at the
Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia and the
Democratic National Convention in
Los Angeles.
[11]
Huffington heads
The Detroit Project, a public interest group
lobbying automakers to start producing cars running on
alternative fuels. The project's 2003 TV ads, which equated driving
sport utility vehicles to funding
terrorism, proved to be particularly controversial, with some stations refusing to run them.
In a 2004 appearance on
The Daily Show
with
Jon Stewart she announced her endorsement of
John Kerry by saying, "When your house is burning down, you don't worry about the remodeling." In recent years, she has been closely associated with the Democratic Party. Huffington was a panel speaker during the 2005 California Democratic Party State Convention, held in Los Angeles. She also spoke at the 2004
College Democrats of America Convention in Boston, which was held in conjunction with the
2004 Democratic National Convention.
California recall election participation
Huffington was an
independent candidate to recall California governor
Gray Davis in the
2003 recall election. She described her candidacy against front-runner
Arnold Schwarzenegger as "the
hybrid versus the
Hummer," making reference to her ownership of a hybrid vehicle, the
Toyota Prius, and Schwarzenegger's Hummer. The two would proceed to have a high-profile clash during the election's
debate, during which both candidates were rebuked for making personal attacks.
Despite briefly retaining former U.S. Senator
Dean Barkley as a campaign advisor and advertising executive
Bill Hillsman as her media director, she dropped out of the race on September 30, 2003. "I'm pulling out, and I'm going to concentrate every ounce of time and energy over the next week working to defeat the recall because I realize now that's the only way to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger," she said. Others attributed her exit to her inability to garner support for her candidacy, noting that polls showed that only about two percent of likely California voters planned to vote for her at the time of her withdrawal.
[12] Though she failed to stop the recall, Huffington's name remained on the
ballot and she
placed 5th, capturing 0.55% of the vote.
Spirituality
Huffington's book
The Fourth Instinct
is based on the idea that all humans have an inherent spiritual yearning.
[13]
Television, radio and Internet presence
In the 1970s, on the strength of her prominence in the Cambridge Union, Arianna Stassinopoulos was a frequent panelist on the weekly
BBC Radio 4 political discussion programme,
Any Questions?
, and the BBC television the panel games
Call My Bluff
and
Face the Music
.
Huffington is co-host of the nationally syndicated
public radio program
Left, Right & Center
. She was originally introduced by the moderator as occupying the chair "from the right", but is now described as "coming from the
fourth dimension of political time and space", or from the "independent-progressive
blogosphere". In May 2007, she and
Mark J. Green began co-hosting a new radio show on
Air America Radio,
7 Days in America
.
Huffington also has an Internet presence with her left leaning website
The Huffington Post
, which features blogs and commentary from her and from a number of prominent liberal journalists, public officials, and celebrities. The site also highlights news stories from various sources.
Prior to
The Huffington Post
, Huffington hosted a website called Ariannaonline.com. Her first foray into the Internet was a website called , which called for the resignation of President
Bill Clinton and was a rallying place for
conservatives opposing Clinton.
Huffington was accused of
plagiarism for copying material for her book
Maria Callas
; the claims were settled out of court.
[14]
In November 2008, Fox announced Huffington would be joining the voice cast of the upcoming Seth MacFarlane animated series
The Cleveland Show
, where she will lend her voice to the wife of Tim the Bear, also named Arianna.
[15]
On November 17, 2008, Huffington substituted for
Rachel Maddow on
MSNBC's
The Rachel Maddow Show
. Some have put forward the idea that she is in the running for a more permanent role as commentator or anchor at MSNBC.
[16]
Huffington was spoofed by actress
Michaela Watkins on the November 22, 2008, episode of
Saturday Night Live
.
[17]
Huffington was also spoofed on the first series of Tracy Ullman's show State of the Union in 2008.
Bibliography
- The Female Woman
(1973) ISBN 0706700988
- After Reason
(1978) ISBN 0812824652
- The Gods of Greece
(1993) ISBN 087113554X
- Maria Callas: The woman Behind the Legend
(1993) ISBN 0815412282
- The Fourth Instinct
(1994) ISBN 0743261631
- Picasso: Creator and Destroyer
(1996) ISBN 0671454463
- Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom
(1998) ISBN 0517396998
- How to Overthrow the Government
(2000) ISBN 0060988312
- Pigs at the Trough
(2003) ISBN 1400047714
- Fanatics & Fools
(2004) ISBN 1401352138
- On Becoming Fearless...In Love, Work, and Life
(2007) ISBN 0316166820
- Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe
(2008) ISBN 9780307269669
References
- Huffington Post: From millionaire's blog to leading liberal newspaper
- http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/most-influential-women-in-media-forbes-woman-power-women-oprah-winf
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/11/arianna-huffington-mediaguardian-100-2009
- Arianna Huffington on AlterNet: ''Bernard Levin Remembered.'' August 17, 2004
- http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/1994_general/sov_94_gen_complete.pdf
- Michael Huffington in The Huffington Post: ''My Road to Damascus Led to the Sundance Film Festival.'' January 16, 2007
- GQ magazine: ''1999 profile of Michael Huffington''
- Huff TV: Strange Bedfellows
- Arianna Huffington's IMDb page.
- http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/12/17/kosovo/
- Shadow Conventions 2000
- CNN.com - Huffington withdraws from recall race - Sep. 30, 2003
- Gallagher, Maggie. "The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul" (review). '''National Review''', July 11, 1994. Accessed online June 11, 2006. [1].
- Nussbaum, Emily (October 9, 2006) "The Human Blog." ''New York Magazine''.
- Fox Seems Keen on 'Cleveland'
- http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/msnbc/exploring_huffingtons_msnbc_guest_hosting_gig_100792.asp
- http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-arianna-huffington/848661/