Huffington video

[Klaus]

Susan Estrich
Call her Guv-to-be, not Mom


August 21, 2003


Arianna Huffington has been recalled as a mother.

Her children have voted with their feet. They didn't want her to run for governor of California. She ran anyway. On the day she announced her candidacy at "A Place Called Home," in South Central Los Angeles, her children moved out of hers in Brentwood and into their father's. "Our oldest daughter has been devastated by it," her dad said.

"A Place Called Home," according to its Web site, was created to give inner-city kids somewhere to go after school to do their homework, watch TV, play with their friends and "be with people that care about them -- basic rights that all kids should have." That's what most kids get from their mothers.

Bad fathers have been running for office for decades. Does it matter if a mother runs instead?

Huffington has no chance of winning. Never did. The only reason to run was her ego, self-aggrandizement, attention -- at the expense of her kids.

She is running on a platform she didn't even believe in a few years ago. Nor is it one she lives by.

How could she do that to her children? my own children ask.

In Huffington's case, of course, it may be a bit more complicated than that, financially speaking, since it's slightly more difficult to live off your children's child support when your children aren't living with you. But don't bet against her. This is, after all, the woman who runs against oil interests and lives in a mansion financed by oil money, rails against pigs at the trough and pays no taxes, runs as an independent and supports a guru. She's even got a documentary crew following her for the campaign. I wonder if they filmed the children moving out.

In truth, I find her charming, as such people can be. She is who she is, and she makes no bones about it. She used to be against feminism and now supports it; used to be a conservative and now isn't; encouraged her husband to support Proposition 187 and now opposes it; used to support Gingrich and now opposes him; opposes corporate tax breaks yet takes advantage of them; rails against oil wealth and lives off it; vows to take care of children and ignores the needs of her own.

It is the people supporting her whom I find utterly inexplicable -- or, rather, indefensible. She doesn't pretend to have principles. But don't they?

The ease with which she has taken Hollywood by storm is an embarrassing confirmation of the shallowness of my hometown. Don't people care that just 10 minutes ago, she railed against everything and everyone she now embraces? I didn't know, some say blankly.

Today's faxes bring an invitation to a "great night of comedy and politics in support of Arianna for Governor," starring Al Franken, Bill Maher and Harry Shearer -- liberal men, today's bait.

Michael Huffington says she is very seductive. I guess. He's admitted to being bisexual, and she got him to marry her. But these guys pretend to be serious about their politics, passionate even. Entertainment is one thing. Crossing the line to politics, turning the governor's race into a joke, is worse.

But when it costs you your kids, when the kids ask you not to do it, when they move out . . . whew.

If you don't get that right, Jackie Kennedy used to say, what difference does anything else make? You're only as happy as your least happy kid, one of my friends always says.

I guess that's not true of Arianna Huffington. She looks pretty happy these days.


http://www.indystar.com/print/articl...-3319-021.html