What “A” List?
In a recent “post” on Arianna Huffington’s “blog”, Actor George Clooney outed himself as a pure bred liberal and had other colorful things to’say about his’fellow Democrats. His statement made headlines and generated traffic to Ms. Huffington’s site which has made great hay over adding Clooney’s name’to a growing list of celebrities and other’A-listers making literary appearances on The Huffington Post.’Readers seem to love’the blog posts from their idols’as evidenced in comment sections that run deep with accolades, whoops, and various kudos’of agreement.’It’s clear that these people really believe’they are responding to the actual personality, and that’eventually, that personality will respond directly to them. That might be true, if the famous, the celebrity, the activist, the politician and the personality actually write the blog post.
Today we find out that Clooney never blogged for Arianna. He didn’t write the post’at all.’A publicist’was handed a sample of a blog article written by someone working with’the’Huffington Post and was asked if they could get it to Clooney so he could rewrite the thing in his own words. A few days later the publicist’OK’d the’sample, and Huffington published it as if it was written by Clooney.’This would be no big deal if the post read’something like, “George Clooney was interviewed recently and’said…” But it wasn’t published that way. It read like his own words.
This calls into question EVERY post on Arianna’s’“blog”. How many of the’articles were written by the people their attributed to? How many were written with the permission of the people attributed?’How many blog posts were written just like’Clooney’s?”
Arianna calls this an “honest misunderstanding”. I call it fraud.
UPDATE: Clooney: “I feel abused”.