Pubdate: Tue, 15 Aug 2000
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2000 The Christian Science Publishing Society.
Contact:  One Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115
Fax: (617) 450-2031
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Forum: http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/vox/p-vox.html
Author: Sara Terry, Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SEARCH FOR DEMOCRATIC LIGHT AMID 'SHADOWS'

An Interview With Outspoken Columnist And Shadow Convention Organizer 
Arianna Huffington

At 5 o'clock last Friday, Arianna Huffington - celebrity columnist, 
political agent provocateur, former Republican turned "progressive 
populist" - was on the telephone, pinning down the final details for the 
"shadow convention," the big political bash she's throwing this week in Los 
Angeles.

As aides and volunteers crisscrossed the study where she works in her 
Brentwood home, and a reporter entered the room, she earnestly asked the 
question of the moment into the telephone: "Do you know where we can get 
red, white, and blue tablecloths?"

It was an amusing indicator of the attention to detail Ms. Huffington 
brings to the gatherings she loves to throw. In recent years, she has 
become a reigning queen of salon-style public policy debates, both here and 
in Washington, hosting dinners whose participants cut across the political 
spectrum.

And in recent weeks, she's taken those intimate gatherings to a national 
level, with the shadow conventions - the first held in Philadelphia during 
the Republican National Convention, and the second held this week as the 
Democrats meet in Los Angeles.

Designed to focus attention on public-policy issues ignored by the major 
parties, the conventions have featured guest lists as eclectic as 
Huffington's dinner parties - ranging from Arizona Sen. John McCain and the 
Rev. Jesse Jackson in Philadelphia to Harvard University Prof. Cornel West 
and Republican Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico in Los Angeles.

"I love independent thinkers," said Huffington, who sat curled up on an 
overstuffed couch, feet tucked underneath her, as if she had no other 
pressures in the world (patriotic tablecloths notwithstanding). "I love 
people who are engaged in the debate of our times, who are questioning 
things, who want to change things. I've always loved getting friends 
together and staying up all night and debating."

First conceived last February, during a conversation between Huffington and 
Peter Hirshberg, a friend and Internet entrepreneur, the shadow conventions 
have drawn together politicians, grass-roots activists, and citizens who 
are fed up with the nation's status quo. Each meeting has focused on three 
topics: campaign-finance overhaul, the growing gap between rich and poor, 
and the need to focus on drug policies that concentrate on treatment rather 
than incarceration.

"These issues don't have financial constituencies supporting them," said 
Scott Harshbarger, former attorney general of Massachusetts and now 
president of Common Cause, at the convention's opening session on Sunday.

"But these are issues that matter to the American people."

Mr. Harshbarger and Common Cause got involved after he sent an e-mail to 
Huffington three months ago, introducing himself and applauding her 
advocacy of campaign-finance overhaul. She called back immediately and 
invited him to participate in the conventions.

"She's an amazingly energetic, substantive person who has a tremendous 
instinct for publicity, which I don't condemn," says Harshbarger. "These 
issues need it."

Not everyone is so charmed by Huffington's "instinct for publicity."

Critics see her as an opportunist, always striving for the spotlight. Katha 
Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, told the Los Angeles Times Magazine 
last month that Huffington's "major interest is in making herself more 
famous and socially prominent. I find it amazing that anyone would take her 
seriously."

It is true that Huffington has enjoyed far more than Andy Warhol's 
proscribed 15 minutes of fame. Born in Greece, she attended Cambridge 
University in England, where she became president of its prestigious 
debating society in the early 1970s - the first foreigner to hold that 
office. While still in her 20s, she garnered attention as an author, 
writing about the feminist movement, and later penning biographies of Maria 
Callas and Pablo Picasso.

In 1980, she came to New York, made a splash in the city's elite social 
circles, and married millionaire Michael Huffington.

After the couple moved to California and her husband (from whom she is now 
divorced) decided to run as a Republican candidate for the US Senate, she 
gained a whole new reputation. She was routinely portrayed in the media as 
a manipulative wife, bent on gaining power. Her image wasn't helped by the 
fact that her husband's campaign was a highly negative race that failed - 
despite the fact that he spent $30 million of his own money, a record at 
that time.

"I'm very lucky he didn't win," says Huffington, who says she never wanted 
her husband to run, but supported him when he chose to do so. "It's a role 
for which I've never been cut out, being a political wife. I've always had 
way too many opinions of my own."

Things didn't get much better for Huffington when she allied herself with 
then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich - only to part with him 
acrimoniously some months later, disillusioned because she says he wasn't 
as compassionate in his politics as she hoped he would be.

Since then, Huffington's political views have evolved from a conservative 
skepticism of the role of government in addressing problems such as 
poverty, to deciding that government funding is essential - not in creating 
new programs, but in providing money to replicate grass-roots efforts that 
have proven successful. While this has damaged her credibility in certain 
circles, her outspoken stands on issues being taken up by the shadow 
conventions have won her admirers.

Now a syndicated newspaper columnist and a frequent guest on Bill Maher's 
"Politically Incorrect" television program, Huffington says she has no 
interest in running for political office - especially "not in a broken 
system," where, "in order to win, you have to sell out."

Response to the conventions, Huffington says - which included 2 million 
Web-site hits during four days in Philadelphia - has strengthened her 
conviction that there is a citizens' movement building across the country.

"You can really feel the longing of people to be reengaged in public life 
in a real way," she says. "You cannot create a civil society if you don't 
have people really deeply caring for something other than their own 
immediate concerns."
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