Pat Dollard

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“her book The Fourth Instinct, handsomely blurbled by Deepak Chopra, describing “the dead ends we are led down when we are obsessed by the pursuit of success, wealth, and recognition.”

Parcbench:

USA TIME 100This writer (very slightly) knew Arianna Huffington a long time ago when she was … a Newt Gingrich Acolyte. Then Newt’s political star fell and she … reinvented herself. (She wouldn’t remember me; she is perhaps the virtuoso social climber of our generation and I was — and remain — far too small a potato to be of any possible interest to her.) That was back in the days when she was launching the anti-MoveOn.org, Resignation.com, calling for Bill Clinton to resign…. Times change….

Slightly later, I happened to attend a presentation that she made in the process of reinventing herself, around her book The Fourth Instinct, handsomely blurbled by Deepak Chopra, describing “the dead ends we are led down when we are obsessed by the pursuit of success, wealth, and recognition.” If memory serves, it was about her making us as spiritually evolved and noble as she so that she could save the Planet. Leaving her lecture, slightly bewildered, it was mildly disconcerting to find a stretch limousine idling out back by all appearances waiting for her and her very stylish entourage (and spewing CO2 out back while idling during her lecture, kind of like Al Gore’s private jet).

Am not the judgmental sort, but — if it WAS her limo — there seems to be some inconsistency between her talk and her walk. Or her ride….

Notwithstanding her critique of the pursuit of success, wealth and recognition, a little less than a year ago Arianna picked up $25 million, mostly, or all, from one presumably star-struck investor, Fred Harman at a rumored $100M implicit market valuation.

There are those who believe that Arianna sprinkled fairy dust into Fred’s eyes to make him believe that it was a great business proposition, not a vanity/propaganda organ that will never pick up enough cash to cover its burn rate. It’s not a business and never will be.

Why won’t it? Because most advertisers hate controversial content. The October 15 HuffPo displayed two modest space ads on its splashpage — both from Adobe, which appears to be buying everything in sight at the moment and so likely ended up there by accident of ad syndication.

And the Po is totally out of the game in the great Facebook/Google War — not only in terms of scale but in terms of the business model. In Facebook’s case it is relying on user-managed metadata; in the big G’s case, relying on anonymous browsing history. Both are smartly spending billions in an effort to get control of the Big Enchilada: the $50B/year of display, rather than classified, advertising. When they get that right… farewell forever Time and Newsweek. Gosh how you’ll be missed! No more Barack Obama covers peering out at us from the newsstand. (Can the Republic survive that? Time for another Bailout?)

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