Big Ol' Pink Elephant (Huffington and Crew) Debut Blog Today

The five-thousand pound pink elephant has entered the room and some bloggers and blog-readers are either pretending it's not there or are being dismissive of it. Arianna Huffington debuted her new celebrity-written blog today, opening with posts by, among others, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Hillary Rosen, Mike Nichols, and Russell Simmons.

I have a feeling that Huffington is legitimizing the media-of-choice favored by the very bloggers and blog-consumers who are so disdainful of The Huffington Post Blog.

On the basis of just one day, I have three beefs with the blog.

First, there are so many posts from so many different people that it creates content overload. There is no way I'm going to read all that stuff.

Oddly enough, this is precisely what some people say about my blog. Maybe that's an idea for marketing Better Living though: It's the one-person group blog.

My second complaint is that Huffinton's blog seems to be definitely tilted in one direction politically. Are there no moderate or conservative celebs?

Of course, everyone's entitled to their opinions. People wouldn't come here to Better Living and expect me to present positive views of sadism, veganism, Euro-bashing, disco music, astrology, or fascism. I'm not into any of that. But one would think that a blog like Huffington's would represent a wider range of world views than is presently visible there.

Third: Why no Comments lines or contact addresses? If you're going to blog, Ms. Huffington et al, you have to realize that this media is a two-way street. No more top-down stuff, even though I know that's the very form of communication with which celebrities may be most accustomed.

But, after all, it is just the first day. It'll take some time to iron out the problems. Welcome to the Blogging World, Arianna and Crew. Have a ton of fun with it. I hope you link to this site.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse wrote about the Huffington blog today, mentioning Larry David. I had to admit [blush] that I didn't know who this was, although I later realized that I had heard of him.

I console myself with the idea that he probably doesn't remember reading about me either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: After Larry David posted on Huffington's blog, Paul Musgrave of In the Agora is willing to read it again.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Former Bush speechwriter David Frum is apparently the token conservative in AriannaLand.