Arianna Huffington

The second of Arianna Huffington’s New York parties for her subtly titled book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe, published by Knopf, took place at the Upper East Side store of Italian designer Domenico Vacca on the evening of Monday, June 23. (The first was on May 9 at the Chambers Hotel, co-hosted by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and former Viacom CEO Tom Freston.)

Ms. Huffington, who was dressed in a tan pantsuit and an off-white silk blouse designed by Mr. Vacca, said she met the designer one year ago at a Tribeca Film Festival dinner, where she was introduced to him by friend and TFF president, Jennifer Maguire Isham.  read more »

Hilary Rosen, who was once chief of the Recording Industry Association of American, has been named political director and Washington editor at large of the Huffington Post, according to a press release. "I'm delighted to welcome Hilary to the team," Arianna Huffington is quoted as saying. "With her experience in the power corridors of Washington, D.C., and her extensive network of contacts, Hilary will be a driving force in taking HuffPost's political coverage to the next level." Ms. Rosen is touted for her connections and knowledge of Washington politics; she is not a journalist.

Ms. Rosen's name has been synonymous with record labels' struggles with so-called digital piracy. When she stepped down from the RIAA in 2003, CNet's John Borland wrote, "Hilary Rosen has presided over a transformation of the organization that has matched the turmoil of the music industry since her ascension in 1998. Once a trade organization little known outside music and policy circles, the RIAA has become a household word known for its vigorous prosecution of online piracy, and its role as the nemesis of file-swapping services from Napster to Kazaa."  read more »

Arianna Huffington made The New York Times on Friday morning for a blog post she wrote on her Web site about John McCain. In that post Ms. Huffington wrote that a few years back McCain told her at a dinner party that he did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000. This made McCain look like a hypocrite, and his campaign responded by calling Ms. Huffington “a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva.”  read more »

Rupert Murdoch was standing in a deep corner of the Rose Hall at about 7:30 p.m. last night to toast his fellow influencers: It was the Time 100 celebration, an event that drums up publicity for the magazine's decreasingly influential list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The day before, Mr. Murdoch had promised investors and reporters listening in on a News Corp. investors' call that he'd prevail in his purchase of Newsday over rival bidders Mort Zuckerman and the Dolans.  read more »

LAObserved's Kevin Roderick points us towards W's profile of Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. Writer Diane Solway spends some time with Huffington, whom the magazine calls Poster Girl (get it?), but we were just interested in all the other people mentioned by name. (Except in the case of Huffington's household help and employees.)  read more »

If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.  read more »

RIGHT IS WRONG
By Arianna Huffington
Alfred A. Knopf, 388 pages, $24.95

Full disclosure: Arianna Huffington and I once had a somewhat half-hearted discussion about my possibly contributing to her eponymous über-blog, The Huffington Post. Nothing ever came of it, but in my time in Washington—even though Arianna lives mostly in L.A.—she’s been a regular guest at the same parties and meetings and panels as I have. She’s even invited me to some.

She’s a unique presence in D.C.: exuberant, friendly, eager to help people network among her vast collection of acquaintances, and, perhaps most unusually for around here, always beautifully dressed. Whenever I see her, it’s our custom to compare shoes. Hers are invariably better.  read more »

Wack Attack: LAObserved's Kevin Roderick discovered an incubating blog called LAT Beatbox that may or may not be run by The Los Angeles Times. Roderick quotes a post lashing out at Sean "Diddy" Combs in the wake of the paper's extremely embarrassing article about the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur: "You might be a smooth criminal, but when you pick on the media, you pick into the devil's nest and you will get stung," the now-password protected entry read.

Rock Star: Yesterday everyone was abuzz about The Times Online story about The Week owner Felix Dennis in which he haltingly told the story of killing a man. Serious, scary stuff, but what about his suggestions for keeping one's crack paraphernalia tidy? According to writer Ginny Dougary, "Dennis was punctilious about the quality of his supplies and kit. 'My equipment was of the absolute finest, and I got to the point where guys were blowing glass vessels for me because I discovered that it worked better with different types of glass vessels,' he says. “'I was literally a crack connoisseur.'... When he talks with a measure of domestic pride about how his 20-odd pipes would emerge scoured and sparkling from the dishwasher, I burst out laughing - and Dennis looks a bit hurt. 'Well, it is domestic, sorry,' he says. 'Because that's where it becomes disgusting, when it looks all dirty, and there was none of that.'" (Somehow this bit slipped past Bob Simon when he profiled Dennis for 60 Minutes II in 2004.)

You Got Served: Journalist Allison Hope Weiner, who's been blogging about the Anthony Pellicano trial for The Huffington Post, has been slapped with a temporary restraining order according to Diane Garrett at Variety.

Not So Fast, Dahling: Speaking of The Huffington Post, remember the news that the news and blogging operation may be worth $200 million? (That's dollars, not Euros, unfortunately.) Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici takes a closer look and determines it's value at a lot closer to $40 million.

So Fine: Life—or at least a racy photo of Giselse Bundchen's rear in today's New York Post—imitates a 1981 Ryan O'Neal comedy.

How much is a group blog and news aggregator worth these days? According to an unnamed source "who was briefed on discussions but was not permitted to speak for attribution" in a New York Times article about The Huffington Post today: "the company has at least looked at the value of the site if it were put up for sale, and a figure around $200 million was used."  read more »

MONDAY

Don’t call it a comeback. Britney Spears dusts herself off and puts on some glasses (prop?) to play an amorous receptionist on How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 8:30 p.m.). Sadly, between her custody battles, mental breakdowns, and her ill-chosen affair with a paparazzo, the cameo amounts to the only good press the fallen pop star has received in some time. (With that kind of drama, it’s clear why she—and her people—chose for her to be on a sitcom.) Her appearance will likely boost the show’s already strong ratings—it had its second-strongest numbers ever last week for its first new episode after the strike-induced hiatus—introducing the show to a larger swath of America and perhaps finally making it a legitimate inheritor of the Friends mantle.  read more »

Arianna Huffington beats Matt Drudge—by at least one metric.

In February, the Huffington Post had 3.7 million unique visitors to the Drudge Report's 3.4 million, according to stats from Nielsen Online. In January, Drudge had 3.2 million visitors and the Huffington Post 2.9 million. (Last month in Off the Record we documented the narrowing gap between the two sites).  read more »