The Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington’s new blog, The Huffington Post, went live today. It’s supposedly a liberal response to the Drudge Report, but it actually seems to have kicked it up a couple of notches in interactivity. The Main Page branches off into the News Wire (which is the most Drudge-like section), and the Blog. The Blog is the interesting part, where ‘celebrity’ guest commentators like Larry David, Walter Cronkite, a Senator, a Representative, and a lot of other folks whose convictions probably far surpass their knowledge.
So far, sounds like fertile shopping territory for a stupid liberal quote or 100 for fishkite to eviscerate, but not much more. However, the current Reader Comments to a Howie Klien email shows the true potential of this site. Klien’s email was in response to a remarkably uninformed blog post by former president of the evil RIAA, Hillary Rosen. Rosen’s post moans, “when, oh when, will Steve Jobs let me buy music from somewhere other than the Apple iTunes store and put it on my iPod?”
In their comments, the Mac Addicts tear her to shreds for daring to question their god and his company. iPod lovers note that “she’s gotten almost all of he major facts wrong”; the iPod can play other music file formats and iTunes songs can be played on other players. Moreover, it is Apples kow-towing to the RIAA that forced the choice of a DRM (digital rights management) technology; the RIAA didn’t bitch that the proprietary format was improper then. The verbal beating is savage and thorough. It made an RIAA-hater like myself feel all warm and fuzzy, even if Hillary is right (for the wrong reason) that iTunes IS bogus.
If the Huffington Post can continue to enable readers to respond to celebrity posts, and Huffington can find celebrities with enough balls to face the unwashed typing masses, you can bet I’ll be reading it frequently.