About a year ago, I was a regular on a Santa Monica radio program called “Left, Right and Center.” Arianna Huffington, the protean author and TV personality, was, if you can believe it, the center of our trio. I was the right. Bob Scheer, Los Angeles Times columnist, was the left.
Arianna had gone through many changes, as we used to say in the 1960s.
Biographer of Picasso and Callas, author of a New Age book on “meaning in a secular world,” conservative Washington hostess and zealot on behalf of Newt Gingrich and of course, her ex-husband, oil heir and former Congressman Michael Huffington and now, having moved permanently to Brentwood, Hollywood hobnobber.
On the program that day, Arianna Version 5.0 began to rant and rave about Americans wasting energy. I reminded on the air that she (or her amanuensis) drove a Lincoln Navigator (12 mpg city, 17 mpg highway. Apparently embarrassed, she quickly sold her land yacht and bought a Toyota Prius, one of those hybrids that gets more than 50 mpg.
This gesture seemed a little silly for someone who owns a huge, energy-gobbling house and flies around on her friends’ private jets. But she was doing her part.
Unfortunately, she could not leave well enough alone. A short while ago, she launched something called the Detroit Project, raised money from some of her L.A. friends and produced two 30-second ads – which aired last month.
The spots clumsily attempt to parody ads that link drug use to terrorism. Thus
