Beyond hypocrisy --- Updates

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Continued from:
Beyond hypocrisy: Arianna Huffington accuses Fox of "inciting" hate

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UPDATE 1, Feb. 21: Arianna Huffington doubles down, dares to call out other public figures for "partisanship" and inciting hate

On February 21, the following story was featured at the top of HuffPost (stories featuring Arianna normally are):

Arianna Debates Partisanship On ABC's 'This Week'

The "money shot":

"Arianna weighed in on CPAC, the major annual gathering of conservative activists.

"The violent imagery was fascinating," she said. "Even [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Pawlenty, who is supposed to be a moderate, said we need to take a page out of the playbook of Tiger Woods' wife and take a nine iron and smash a window out of big government. That was the day after the pilot had flown a plane into a federal government building. So that kind of rhetoric is disturbing."

And yet, none of the panelists uttered a peep about the "disturbing rhetoric" that passes as "journalism" at HuffPost on a routine basis, that incites hateful misperceptions and inflammatory user comments. As a reminder, see here, here, and elsewhere on Huff-Watch.


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UPDATE 2, Feb. 26: (1) Will Ms. Huffington also call out leftist talker Ed Shultz for his calls for violence against Dick Cheney? Don't hold your breath; (2) HuffPost creates misleading, hate-inciting splash headline --- then won't report on the bomb threats it helped to inspire

(1) As noted in Update 1, Ms. Huffington is now America's self-proclaimed guru of "civility" and corporate responsibility, and has no tolerance for anyone in the "right wing media" who espouses "violent imagery." Does this mean she'll be denouncing MSNBC and Ed Schultz for this little gem of political tolerance --- directed at Vice President Cheney, after he was recently hospitalized for a heart attack?

"We ought to rip [Cheney's heart] out and kick it around, and stuff it back in him... [he is a] a war criminal and... on the take from Halliburton..."

Or is this another instance in which Ms. Huffington will conveniently ignore the hate speech, the "inflammatory claims, heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" that is endemic of the left --- particularly on HuffPost?

Will the fact that she regularly appears (1, 2, 3, 4) on Schultz's hate-infested (1, 2, 3, 4), dismally-rated TV show impact her decision on whether or not to speak out against him?

Here's a search to help you determine the truth, of whether she ever denounced him for saying such a thing (hint: she hasn't).

Hat tip: Newsbusters, on a tip from Huff-Watch reader "MoniqueNM."

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In a similar vein, we're reminded that Ms. Huffington's people chose to publish this 2006 HuffPost blog article by Tony Hedra, in which he prayed for Cheney's death --- on Thanksgiving --- calling him the planet's "number one human tumor." And the article was still published on HuffPost as of February 2010:


(2) And on the subject of Ms. Huffington's scolding FNC for "angry minds that traffic in heated exaggeration, and prey[ing] on fear, political instability, and economic suffering," tonight HuffPost featured this splash headline:


Did Sen. Bunning really say "Tough shit" for the unemployed? No --- as HuffPost's own article says:

[W]hen Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit." Bunning says he doesn't oppose extending benefits -- he just doesn't want the money that's required added to the deficit. He proposes paying for the 30-day extension with stimulus funds. [...]

Bunning was saying "tough shit" to a Democratic senator --- representing the party that refused to free up the $10 billion necessary for these extensions from unused TARP (Porkulus) money, which could be done with the stroke of Harry Reid's pen --- rather than adding it to our national debt. He was not saying "tough shit" to the unemployed. As Sen. Cornyn pointed out (in HuffPost's own article), it was the Democrats themselves who had scuttled their own cause, who then planned to blame it all on Republicans:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the floor after Reid to stick up for Bunning. He noted that there is broad bipartisan support for extending benefits, but said Bunning was right to take a stand against adding $10 billion to the deficit. He also pointed out that the jobs bill that Reid scrapped two weeks ago, crafted by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), contained an extension of UI and COBRA.

Thanks to the incitement caused by inflammatory, misleading headlines such as the one HuffPost chose to employ, two bomb threats were phoned into Sen. Bunning's office last week (h/t GatewayPundit):

And how many articles do you think HuffPost decided to publish about these bomb threats (being that it diligently publishes and gives top promotion to any real or faux "right-wing" call to, or acts of violence)? You got it: zero. HuffPost has not run a single article on the fact that bomb threats were phoned into the office of a U.S. senator that it happened to target with one of its infamous smear campaigns (which it uses primarily against conservatives, and Israel/Jews).


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UPDATE 3, Mar. 4: NewsBusters exposes more of Ms. Huffington's continuing hypocrisy

We recently discovered that several NewsBusters bloggers have documented some very interesting additional aspects of her hypocrisy:

Arianna Huffington Denounces 'Extremist' Beck Yet Employs Sharia Advocate
By Lachlan Markay

Does Arianna Huffington consider Glenn Beck more radical and dangerous than an advocate of Islamic Sharia law? She's let off a lot of hot air lately criticizing Fox News president Roger Ailes for employing Beck, but it turns out that on the Huffington Post's payroll is an envoy to the United States from the Somali Unity government, led by the Islamic Courts Union. The ICU is a strong proponent of Sharia law, and an organization dubbed by some the Taliban of Africa for its radical interpretation of Islam and its support for some violent elements of the Islamic community (like Osama Bin Laden). [...]

Who Is Arianna Huffington To Lecture Others About Hiring Paranoid Commentators?
By Tim Graham

The most surreal moment of Arianna Huffington’s attack on Roger Ailes on ABC's This Week on Sunday was her denunciation of Fox News for embracing what liberal historian Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics," which she insisted "is dangerous when there is real pain out there." Paranoid Style could be a regular section title for The Huffington Post. In our 2007 special report, "Huffington’s House of Horrors," we made a long list of vicious and hateful writings that Arianna approved for publication about George W. Bush and his administration. [...]

More:

Huffington: Fox News 'Tumor' Label 'A Legitimate View'; Alleges Beck, Limbaugh Have 'Positions Based on Fantasy'

Beck Demolishes Huffington: She's 'Media Matters After a Few Drinks'

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UPDATE 4, Mar. 5: Ms. Huffington continues her hypocrisy, on "Real Time With Bill Maher"

Lets recall: In her February 1 blog article, she bemoaned Fox News Channel for violating what she defined as:

"[what] the great historian Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics," which he defined as angry minds that traffic in "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy," and that see "the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms... always manning the barricades of civilization."

Sound familiar?

Beck preys on fear, political instability, and economic suffering [...]"

On March 5, she appeared on "Real Time With Bill Maher," which, like all her other TV appearances, she pimped near the top of the front page of HuffPost, shortly thereafter:


And what did she have to say? Here's excerpts from the article:

"Thirty years ago, the CEOs that are in 'Undercover Boss' were making 30 times as much as their working people. Now, they're making 300 times as much! We're about to become Venezuela, or Brazil, you know where the people at the top are basically behind they're [sic] gates with guards to protect their kids from kidnapping. The middle class is crumbling and that's the country we're going to become... if we don't fundamentally change where we're going."

Arianna explained that the anger driving Michael Moore is the same as the anger felt by those in the Tea Party movement. "It's the anger about that fact that what is happening is not fair, that the fix is in, that the system is rigged, and that people who are working hard are not really getting rewarded. And the people at the top who brought us to the financial brink were actually bailed out by the taxpayers."

"Heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy, prey[ing] on fear, political instability, and economic suffering," anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

By her double-jointed double-standards, it must be hard to not see the hypocrisy there. But wait, there's more:

Regarding "the people at the top are basically behind they're [sic] gates with guards to protect their kids from kidnapping." Hm. Here is a story that ABC's John Stossel did on her in April 2008, in which he confronted her with some of the innumerable aspects of her raving hypocrisy:

• The fact that she is shuttled to and from speaking engagements in a huge SUV, with an armed security guard
  
  
• The fact that while she preaches environmentally-conscious living and denounces "excess," she lives in a huge Brentwood mansion (mostly alone, and with one of her two daughters), and travels the world on private jets and mega-yachts
  

See the video for yourself:

Nope, no hypocrisy there!!


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UPDATE 5, APR. 7: HuffPost's top blog article opens with, is consumed by hate. But it's different when HuffPost does it.

Previously:

"If you're looking for the usual flame-throwing, name-calling, and simplistic attack dog rhetoric ... don't bother coming to the Huffington Post."
- Arianna Huffington, May 6, 2005

On April 7, 2010, the teaser for HuffPost's top blog article of the day appeared as follows:

Yes, that sure sounds like a civil, respectful, fact-based, insightful article that will lead to respectful dialogue. An article that HuffPost chose to publish.

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