Profiles In Scourging: Blarghosphere Awards Special

Huffington Post

Public enemies number one and two with Arianna, but her paleo-feminist contributors feel a bit differently. Media gadfly and one-time California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington lassoed up enough venture capital to create her own bully pulpit back in 2005. The bloated CSS nightmare of the Huffington Post has since attracted an A-list rogue's gallery of political commentators, comedians, actors, and politicians to write blog entries. It has become a nexus for political commentary and one of the most popular political websites in the world.

This is all very impressive, but the site is actually horrible. The articles are often only two or three paragraphs long and during major events in the news the front of the site will be covered with mini-editorials from every imaginable person on the same topic.

"I give up. If I have to watch another great American woman thrown in the dustbin of history to please the patriarchy, I'll move to Canada..."

- Erica Jong
From her Huffington Post article entitled (no joke) 'Patriarchy: 1000, Hillary: 0'

Frequently seen "HuffPo" commentary includes:

• Arianna's near-daily rant about horribly mean big fat loser Hillary Clinton. Only tolerable because you can imagine her reading the article aloud in her James Bond villain accent.
• Harry Shearer's monotonous articles about what a travesty it is that the media is completely ignoring New Orleans. He writes nearly one a week and they are increasingly tone deaf to the reality of America, where pretty much every city is turning into New Orleans. There's such a thing as caring too much about an issue.
• Erica Jong or Gloria Steinem or some other sub-retardate feminist filling up their extra-absorbent pads with tears about misogyny. How could Hillary be losing? It's those evil men! Listen up you hysterical broads, I know it's hard to take, but maybe Hillary is losing because she is shit.
• Hatefully terrible fake news items from hacky comedians. Imagine boiling all the humor out of an Onion headline from 1993. Yes, they are even less funny than my articles here.
• Some crusty Washington or Hollywood asshole trying to disguise a promo for their shitty book as an op-ed piece. This generation really reminds me of the one I wrote about in my new book. Also known as the Brokaw effect.
• An actor or some other celebrity voicing their opinion on politics or current events, because they totally couldn't find any other forum to drop this stupid load on America. Favorites include Alec Baldwin and Nora Ephron.
• Wonky op-ed writers or journalists deep in the weeds cashing in for commission with an article rejected by the Times and the Washington Post. Easily spotted by the low number of comments. Even more easily spotted if you don't recognize the name as someone who appears on an NBC network or the headline isn't a pun about Bush's stupidity.
• Near worst blogger ever Taylor Marsh, who paid to run her columns in LA Weekly as advertisements and paid a Nevada AM radio station to carry her radio show, writing something impossibly stupid about how she is going to support John McCain over Obama because Obama said something good about Ronald Reagan. Or how she is going to support John McCain over Obama because he is a cult leader. Or how Democrats are going to vote for John McCain over Obama because of his pastor, so you dummies had better nominate Hillary Clinton!
  

Those are all reasons to stay away, but the Huffington Post's real claim to fame is that famous politicians write blog entries. These articles are probably written by a team of the politician's staffers and then focus grouped depending on whether or not the politician is in a campaign. They only write for Huffington Post because of its Alexa ranking, and the site only has that ranking because dummies like you keep reading it.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)