The Seattle Times' Nicole Brodeur writes today about Arianna Huffington, non-taxpaying multi-millionaire anti-tax-cheating "populist", who as Brodeur puts it:
spent $700,000 trying to get elected governor of California, only to pull out six days before the vote.The Cambridge-educated Greek-born Arianna Stassinopoulos, who became an American after marrying homosexual oil-heir Michael Huffington, is speaking in Seattle Tuesday as part of the "American Voices" series of something called "Foolproof Performing Arts".
Other recent and future guests of the Foolproof series include: Bill Clinton, Molly Ivins (twice), Garry Trudeau, Michael Moore, Robert Reich, Al Franken, Janeanne Garofalo and Gore Vidal.
The American Voices describes itself as
a forum for ideas, people and viewpoints under-represented or excluded from the national political and media mainstream [like the people mentioned above, presumably]. Its purpose: to revitalize the national public policy debate by engaging, informing, inspiring and motivating our citizenry to take part in the crucial conversations and decisions destined to affect our lives and the lives of generations to come.Yes it does, but what do these folks mean by "Democracy"? The advisory board consists of the following individuals:Democracy takes effort.
Gary Gibson [General Manager of Seattle's city cable TV station]democracy as the exclusive province of Democrats!
Deborah Jacobs [Seattle City Librarian]
Hubert G. Locke [feverishly anti-Bush former Dean of the Evans School of Public Policy]
Karen Marchioro [member of the Democratic National Committee]
Virginia McDermott [wife of Democratic House member "Baghdad Jim" McDermott]
Krist Novoselic [anti-free-trade Nirvana bassplayer, who contemplated running for Lt. Governor as a Democrat]
The Hon. Deborah Senn [Democratic former State Insurance Commissioner, now candidate for Attorney General]
Eileen Tietze [doesn't show up on google]
I'm still puzzled about the name "Foolproof". Is the implication that the audience of people who would pay money to listen to, say, Arianna Huffington, is impervious to fools, or is buying a ticket to one of these events supposed to prove something?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 25, 2004 11:40 AMGreat post!
OT: are you related to the Sharansky's of Barstow?
Posted by: Ricky Vandal on April 25, 2004 05:08 PMThe diveristy of political opinion in Seattle 2004 resembels the same diversity of opinion you would have found in Leningrad in 1956.
Posted by: Joel on April 26, 2004 06:10 AMMembers of Foolproof Performing Arts so call themselves because they believe themselves invulnerable to the orations and arguments of fools.
That explains their list of scheduled speakers.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on April 26, 2004 09:01 AM