Arianna-Gate, Or Clooney-Gate?

The Huffington Post is one of the most successful of the political blogs, in part because it represents more than the authorial voice of its eponymous founder, Arianna Huffington. On any given day, you’re likely to read contributions from pop stars and intellectuals, policy wonks and demagogues.  So it came as no surprise about a week ago when a post appeared there under the name of Oscar-winning actor George Clooney, defending the liberal values that everybody knows he believes in.  But there was one problem. Clooney never blogged these statements.  Yes, he had uttered them, in interviews with CNN and a British newspaper, but someone on Ms. Huffington’s staff pulled them all together and composed an article from the raw interview materials.  Ms. Huffington ran this past one of Clooney’s assistants for accuracy, and got confirmation, so posted this pseudo-blog. Clooney, a man who knows a thing or two about nuanced communications, hit the roof and pointed out that he had never blogged, and that the quality and tone of oral statements offered in response to questions vary greatly from the rigors of written discourse, even in its oft-diluted blog-alicious form.  This story is told in an article from today’s New York Times, but, wait, there’s more to this flap.  For a week after Clooney went public, Ms. Huffington remained a steely silence, and pointed out that she had gotten confirmation of these statements.  Her circle of bloggers, afraid that their credibility might be harmed by this Clooney infatuation, started besieging her with requests to remove the post and adopt a new policy on these things.  Voila!  The post disappeared, and that most rare of rarities, a mea culpa, “Lesson Learned,” by a public figure, Ms. Huffington, followed.  Expect an ongoing debate on the ethics of blogging to gain momentum from this contretemps among friends.  Especially interesting are the 240+ comments that “Lesson Learned” garnered from the Huffington faithful.