The Huffington Post Launches
There's a Drudge-style screaming header; not a surprise since Andrew Breitbart (who formerly joked that he was "Matt Drudge's bitch") is under contract to do the heavy lifting for Arianna. I found the celebrity posts somewhat lukewarm, but Michael Isikoff offered this weird and interesting Nixon link:
After his secretary conveyed psychic Jeane Dixon’s prophecies about terrorism, President Nixon ordered Henry Kissinger and others to prepare for attacks
Laurie David, the environmentalist wife of Larry David, offered a blurb about hybrids that attracted my attention:
Headlines blare from every paper about Ford’s and GM’s record losses, that buyers are shunning gas thirsty SUV’s, that Toyota and Nissan are making record gains! And there in the middle of American Idol are ads for the Ford new hybrid Escape? No -- ads for the regular Ford Escape, with its puny gas mileage of 18 miles per gallon. Can you imagine?! Here they finally have the car (years after the Prius has taken off), Americans are crunched at the gas station, and there is Ford still pushing their low mileage SUV’s to the youth of America.
I do wonder if she and Arianna and their well-heeled friends have installed solar panels on their houses to go along with those hybrids (the environmental version of having your handbag match your shoes), and have taken other steps to save energy, like not flying on private jets and using reusablebags.com at the grocery store. (I live in a rented Craftsman shack with one gas heater, but I do have reusable bags' ACME Workhorse Reusable Shopping Bag Set, and while I do go to Paris, I never, ever go on a private jet. Or even in first class. Sigh.)
Say Amy, weren't you the one making smartass comments to strangers in front of Yamashiro the other night? But Yamashiro burns energy to freeze all that fish, don't they? Huh? You say it's fresh? So they musta flown it in. And all those exotic furnishings... They had to be brought in from somewhere. A person burns an awful lot of fossil fuels to eat a meal like that.... IJS.
The Hoffington post. Whad'ya know, her picture's right there at the top! Kinda like Oprah magazine. Say what you want about Utne, we have no idea what he looks like.
Crid at May 9, 2005 6:38 AM
Didn't you think most of the entries read like college application essays? (John Cusak, esp.) And while I'm sure Mike Nichols wrote his own, but who cares? Less ponderous, more spontaneous.
I'm sure one of Laurie's houses has some green-friendly features, but which one?
KateCo at May 9, 2005 7:00 AM
Crid, I'm not saying people should stop eating fish from overseas (especially since so much of the fish in our waters is so polluted), or avoid going out to a group dinner because the dinner is planned at a sushi restaurant, but that we should all make an effort to what we can to conserve while still continuing to lead our lives relatively comfortably. There's no reason for most Hummer owners to drive that instead of say, a smaller luxury car with good gas mileage. They're impairing our breathing and causing greater dependence on foreign oil -- perhaps just by giving others the idea that driving one is a cool thing to do. And they're doing this needlessly.
And yeah, Kate...you're absolutely right. All they're missing is "Why Harvard Would Be Benefited By My Attendance" at the top!
Amy Alkon at May 9, 2005 9:18 AM
"And there in the middle of American Idol are ads for the Ford new
hybrid Escape? No -- ads for the regular Ford Escape, with its puny
gas mileage of 18 miles per gallon."
Why would you be surprised? You don't need to advertise
something that's selling as many (or more) as you can build. With a
used Prius selling for more than a new one, it's clear that interest
in hybrids is stronger than the production line can keep up with.
They need to advertise the dogs so that they don't just sit
there taking up inventory.
Ron at May 9, 2005 9:30 AM
> I'm not saying people should stop eating
> fish from overseas...
My point exactly!
> ...we should all make an effort to what we
> can to conserve...
You don't mean it. You just like saying snotty things to people!
We gotta get you a subscription to Reason.
Crid at May 9, 2005 3:48 PM
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