Thursday, April 15, 2010

Arianna's Mandatory Cult Meetings

This was one of the comments that really brought home to me that perhaps there was something more serious going on with Huffpo censorship than a poorly designed expert system. On the article Why Are Children Rejecting Science? user ScienceFTW posted a comment that talked about Ms. Huffington’s ties to new age ideas. His comment included two links that were quite interesting.

The first link described Ms. Huffington’s connection to “the Movement For Spiritual Inner Awareness a cult ex-members described as sexually and financially exploitive in a series of Los Angeles Times exposés”.

The second was an announcement on the Texas Freedom Network about “an evening with Arianna Huffington”. It wasn’t the announcement itself that was interesting but the comments that followed which were quite critical of Ms. Huffington.

My reaction to both these articles was mild interest. However, I was much more interested when I saw ScienceFTW’s comment vanish as I tried to reply to it. Even more interesting was how difficult it was for me to simply reply back to ScienceFTW and acknowledge that I had seen the comments and links before they were moderated out of existence. I tried several comments all of which were deleted then I finally managed to get the following brief comment in. I’ve found that the shorter you make comments the better chance they have to make it past the many layers of Huffpo censorship:

=== Begin Comment ===
RedDogBear 134 fans permalink
I've tried leaving several comments, will try to keep this short as possible: thanks for the links, I saw and saved them before they vanished.
    Reply     Favorite     Flag as abusive Posted 03:09 PM on 4/10/2010
ScienceFTW Unfan 110 fans permalink
Yeah, don't complain about it too much. I did, and i was banned...
=== Begin Comment ===

To be honest I’m not all that concerned if Ms. Huffington likes some new age cult. I also don’t care that much if she makes her staff attend their meetings. I’ve worked in the corporate world and being forced to attend time wasting meetings is more or less expected. Also, I recognize this may be mostly or completely just rumors and things taken out of context by disgruntled ex-employees or progressive bloggers who may not like Ms. Huffington for other reasons. What doesn’t seem acceptable to me is that a progressive blog censors reasonable criticism. If this is all hooey then Huffpo should say so or ignore it not censor it.

5 comments:

  1. 5/5/10
    12:55 AM CST

    ...Damn I didn't know about any of this crap...I think it could be ultimately important if any of it is true as regard to her being really objective about anything, let alone a lack of critical thinking...I need to look into this...None of this seems to have surfaced in her public appearances...nor do I recall this in any of her books. RedDog, do you recall such a thing, independently, I mean? Have I missed something ?
    J. Ballard

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  2. J.B., I haven't followed her all that closely, but for what its worth its news to me as well.

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  3. Wednesday, May 5, 2010
    7:25 PM CST

    I'm not swayed yet, but it would explain the proliferation of mindless woo and her deferential treatment to "religion".

    So far, my overall impression is that she may well have gotten in over her head with that MSIA Roger creep (she denies being a member) while she was married to that other RoboRebuplico creep, who BTW, in supposedly an "Esquire interview", claimed Arianna knew he was gay when she entered into the marriage.

    Frankly, I do not believe that and I suspect herein lies a major clue to the alleged cult "association". I suspect she was (at least initially) completely in the dark over hubby being gay. My instinctual take on it is that gay hubby and MISA "Roger" creep were making the beast with two backs, and Arianna was completely oblivious to this. They all ta-tee-tahed and partied around in the Getty circle; who the hell knows ?? This scenario has happened uncounted times with most likely thousands of American women, bright and stupid, who were completely in the dark about their hubby's closet behavior. Closeted gay men WILL exploit hapless heterosexual women. Always. It was and remains the most significant copping strategy that helped sustain a modicum of sanity while living in the closet, deceptive and destructive as it is.

    Having lived in California for 14 years, I am personally acquainted with the insidiousness of California's gay politique template. In heterosexual circles, it can be very disruptive and poisonous.

    As bright as Arianna certainly is, she came from a very cloistered and elite educational background, and her naivete about the crazy California shenanigans of any political circle, most especially regarding the disjointed "Gay" front, would certainly not be a surprise. In fact, given her early background, naivete would be expected.

    Naivete does not translate into proof of cult membership.

    I'm going to review her book : "The Fourth Instinct-The Call of the Soul".

    This issue bothers me a great deal in light of our concerted efforts. I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

    J.B.

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  4. I hope this isn't too off-topic, but since this post concerns comments that appear, only to be scrubbed later once they appear to anger Arianna, I'd also like to point out that entire articles get scrubbed sometimes. Case in point, Alexa Von Tobel, a hopelessly out of touch woman who wrote an article for HuffPo that was so completely clueless that she was quickly eviscerated in the comments.

    It was an article about her "financial challenge" to go a day without spending money on "snacks," or lattés or whatever. Needless to say, this did not go over well with all the poor and unemployed people on HuffPo who were rightly outraged that a former Morgan Stanley trader felt like it was some amazing achievement to not buy an afternoon muffin (the article was really that bad).

    The comments were numerous and hilarious. Here's mine:

    "What a huge pile of fail this is. If you were trying to be funny, please, just stop. You're terrible at it. If you weren't trying to be funny, you've got to be the most entitled, obtuse little princess that's ever ruined my day on this site.

    Here's an idea for you: instead of not spending any money for a day, try spending once a week. On groceries. Period. No lattes, no snacks, no taxis. You get to eat twice a day, max. Welcome to the real world, your majesty."

    The rest weren't quite as nice.

    Well, you can imagine my disappointment when the following day, not only was my comment gone, but all the other negative comments were gone as well. What were at least three or four pages of righteous indignation suddenly became one very short page of tepid support comments (less than ten). Oh, and the comments were closed for that article. After one day.

    Guess what? Now the whole article is gone. It was here, but has been scrubbed from the site. How's that for a whitewash? Frankly, if I were Alexa I would have wanted it vaporized as well. It really made her look like a fool and cast a pall on all her other financial articles.

    Anyway, I thought that was pretty shady of HuffPo.

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  5. I watched Ariana on DemocracyNow the other night. For her new book. She was asked about Pres.Obama's latest speech. She agreed with him, on points but then went on to say she disagreed with his narrative.

    To me, it didn't make sense.
    She then discussed her ideas of what the problems are and stated about 3- 4 times,in the course of the interview, how solutions must be at a grass roots level. Which surprised me, because there are so many true grass roots org.'s that I guess she's unaware of. And she added it must start with our "spirituality".....

    Not the Industries and politics that got us to where we are??? But to look inside at our spirituality?

    But she's slick the way she sort of slips it in x number of times during the interview. My feeling is People are in the streets, grass roots are growing,(not including astroturfs) she's just not listening.

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