BillLindau

Noted journalist Huffington plasts Bush administration, campaugns, media

From The Robeson Journal, Lumberton, N.C., Oct. 1, 2008
By Bill Lindau
PEMBROKE -- The Givens Performing Arts Center could hardly have picked a more timely guest to open its Distinguished Speaker Series, with the recent financial crisis, a tight presidential campaign with some highly controversial candidates and other issues. High-profile journalist Arianna Huffington had plenty to say about both topics and more Tuesday, Sept. 23, at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke."We're at a real turning point, a real crisis in American politics," said the petite woman in the accents of her native Greece, in her speech entitled "Road to 2008: Presidential Politics Today".The public first heard of Arianna Huffington in 2002, when she spoke out against gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Now an successful journalist and rated one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Huffington said nothing about her take on SUVs, but she had a lot of other things to say to 150 local university students and other politically minded members of the audience. She spoke for nearly an hour, concluding her speech by fielding questions from the audience, and signing autographs afterwards."Isn't it amazing what happened?" Huffington said, commenting on woes on Wall Street."Just a day before, we were talking about whether Barack Obama's expression, 'putting lipstick on a pig', was sexist, and we were talking about Sarah Palin and her pregnant. It takes a major collapse to get the people to wake up.""Political campaigns do not make sense," Huffington later commented. "For months (John) McCain has attacked Obama for spending too much time in Washington, but he's only been there for two years."Huffington left her native Greece for England, here she attained a M.A. degree in economics from Cambridge University. At 21, she became president of the Cambridge Union debating society before she emigrated to the United States. She founded The Huffington Post when she came here. She has written 12 books, and in addition to her duties as editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, she co-hosts the National Public Radio political roundtable program, "Left, Right and Center". "When I was growing up in Greece, while most kids were following sports, I was following the news," Huffington said."Some of my best years of my life were in college in Cambridge, in England," she said. Among the lessons she retained was that people said the thing they feared the most was public speaking."Do you know what the number-two fear is?" she asked. "Death by mutilation."
She mentioned a citizen journalism project by The Huffington Post called "Off The Bus." She said this project was "an effort to get out of the bubble," rather than reporting news "from the bus". It's also designed to promote so-called citizen journalism, getting citizens involved in reporting the news. She said people can participate by e-mailing araianna@huffingtonpost.com.Since the program originated, Huffington has heard from one of its first participants, she said. She said it was a 61-year-old woman who started covering an event in her county, and now she is covering Sarah Palin, Huffington said.She says the media today does not deal with crucial issues as much as it should, focusing more on show business and candidates' peccadilloes instead. She said the media should also stop doing a left- or a right-wing take on issues."If the old media suffers from attention-deficit disorder, the new media suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder," Huffington said."These issues that used to be a left or right position are now solidly mainstream: Health care, global warming, bringing the troops home," Huffington said."Stop looking at everything from left and right and start looking at it from the center." she added, talking about the need to work together. She says both parties in Washington spend too much time debating whether or not one party is speaking the truth, and not enough time working out a plan of action.As an example, Huffington cited the issue of global warming."Instead of spending all these years debating whether or not global warming exists, we could've spent out time debating what to do about it."She also said past presidential elections could have gone the other way if a lot more people had voted. She said the swing vote could determine the outcome this year."The Obama campaign should devote its time to convincing the people who haven't voted," Huffington said. "Eighty-three million did not vote in 2004. They've given up. If we can get 10 percent of these people to vote, it can make a difference."She once against stressed the need to vote, particularly in this election."You may have to close your nose and vote the lesser of two evils," she said. "But there is a vast difference between the two candidates."."The Democratic party needs to come together," said Huffington, a former self-proclaimed conservative. "Then there's the Republican party, with this big soap opera going on."Huffington said skirting more pressing issues by talking about such relatively safe topics as Sarah Pailin's family life does not do any good, either to the public or to McCain's opponents. "My argument is that every minute the campaign is spent talking about Sarah Palin is good for John McCain because it takes people's attention away from the real issues."Meanwhile, "people are losing their homes, they're losing their retirement funds, they're not being able to send their kids to college," Huffington added. "And we have the problems in Iraq,""Iraq is not a mixed bag," she said. "Iraq is an unqualified disaster. It is the worst foreign policy disaster in American history."Calling it a mixed bag is like going to the doctor and he says you have a mixed bag diagnosis. 'On the one hand, you have a brain tumor. On the other hand, your acne's clearing up.'"She said she does not pay much attention to polls, and she cautioned people not to cave in to fearmongering."Most of the people who answer polls are bored and lonely Americans who have nothing better to do than talk to strangers," she said."Fearmongers can make people not rational. It makes people operate from their lizard brains, not their rational brains," Huffington said in the question-and-answer session.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 7:45 PM