Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of HuffingtonPost.com, addresses the crowd at the CSULB Carpenter Center last Thursday evening. Photo by Connor O’Brien. Article by Matt Dupree.
8:40am | “I hope you can tell I’m wearing school colors” she quipped. “Just good research.” It was at this point I realize I am in love, approximately one minute into Arianna Huffington’s speech (Lecture? Talk? The noun for tonight’s event is unclear, though the verb is securely “speak”). The Carpenter Center is a cavernous venue, but they’ve mercifully placed the press seats in the closest row of the general seating tier, spitting distance from the real reserved section. Spitting would be inadvisable, though, since this section is full to bursting with Long Beach luminaries. Mayor Bob sits front row left, like Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game. I spot Kerstin Kansteiner, owner of Portfolio Coffeehouse, realizing then and there that I drink way too much coffee.
In Director Art Levine’s opening statement, he calls this the largest audience in the Distinguished Speaker Series’ history. The reserved section must be the crux of this statistic, because large swaths of the nosebleed section beam the red velvet of empty seats. Levine, besides being the night’s MC, co-founded the Speaker Series in addition to teaching ethics and legal studies at CSULB. He keeps it brief (what a pro) and brings up CSULB president F. King Alexander and his Bluegrass-Fusion quintet, the Human Resources. Okay, the part about the band wasn’t true, but wouldn’t it have been spectacular?
Alexander conducts a moment of silence for State Senator Jenny Oropeza, who passed away the night before. Oropeza, who remains in good odds to win her re-election bid on November 2nd, served two terms as Long Beach State’s student body president long before her political career took off to the city and state legislatures.
Without further ado, Huffington takes the stage. She is sunny and warm even against the deep blue of the curtains. She is never at a loss for a joke. “[Christine O’Donnell] doesn’t believe in masturbation, which’ll be a problem if she gets to the United States Senate. That’s all they do.” And, as she asserted early on, she has done very good research. “America is 10th in upward mobility… behind France. That’s like France being behind America in fine wine, croissants, and afternoon sex.” I jot down anything that sounds adorable in her Greek accent: NEE-shee (Niche), LEE-zard (Lizard), BOO-k (Book), da-VEE-zhon (Division). I am hopelessly smitten, even when the topic switches to her book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream (a mood-killer if there ever was one).
The book, which receives a gracious few plugs considering it being available for purchase in the lobby (or at your local bookseller!), serves a tangential reference point for other topics more suited to the evening’s stated focus: “Politics And The New Media.” She discusses the failures of the mainstream media, as well as the triumphs of the new media, “They have A.D.D., we have O.C.D.” Quoting Craig Newmark of Craigslist (I always thought his last name would be Slist), she sums up why networking and media are so inextricably linked in the internet era, “Trust is the New Black.” Huffington says that the mainstream media is distrusted after missing the two big stories of the decade: the absence of WMDs in Iraq and the advent of the financial meltdown. “They’re good at autopsies, not biopsies.”
As to the new media, Huffington points out the key to why so many people blog, edit, and comment for free: “Self-expression is the new entertainment. Nobody ever asked why anyone sat in front of a television for seven hours for free.” Paraphrasing Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, “Twitter is not the triumph of technology, but the triumph of humanity.”
Illustrating the dominance of the internet in group interaction, Huffington points out that Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin wasn’t a smash hit until it made the rounds on the internet. Fey becomes the second Greek-American of the night to receive furious applause. The third, Michael Dukakis, mentioned much later during the Q&A session, breaks the Greek streak when his name sparks only consolation laughter from the crowd.
Discussing recent events, she mentions the upcoming Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert rallies (and the crowd goes wild). She describes her “moment of exuberance” in which she promised to shuttle anyone interested from the HuffPo offices in New York to the rally. Little did she know that over 14,000 people would sign up, but she promises that she’ll have the necessary buses ready. She describes NPR’s staff moratorium on attending the rally as a “contrived, obsolete view of objectivity.” I agree wholeheartedly (Go Giants!).
The Panel discussion fields questions from Craig Smith (Director of the Center for First Amendment, Former Speechwriter for Gerald Ford), Lisa Vollendorf (Chair of CSULB’s Department of Romance, German, Russian Languages And Literatures), and Lucy Nguyen (CSULB Student Vice President). If you couldn’t tell by those parentheticals, Lucy found herself shoved into the “youth” category. She deserves kudos, though, for coming up with an answer on the fly to Art Levine’s question to her, the only member of the panel who suddenly had to field a question instead of offer one to Arianna.
The audience questions were predictably dull. Levine seemed to make no effort to screen the choices he read, which ran the gamut from confusing in subject to boring in scope (“How do you accomplish so much without getting burnt out?”). The inevitable college journalism question pops up, no doubt from a future journalism major scared to the marrow over their job prospects, and Arianna turns into the good shepherd. “This is a great time for College Journalism. I encourage you journalists to send me an e-mail so we can make connections with your campus media.” The campus media, seated a few seats to my right, is noticeably bristling. It’s about the fifth time during the evening that Arianna mentions her email address ([email protected]), but I see right through her. Clearly, she’s reciprocating my affection.
Matt Dupree is a writer and graduate of the CSULB English Department. He lives in Long Beach.