T A B L E+T A L K Is there life after work? Share your tales of post-retirement adventures and expectations in the Work Life area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E Geraldo's mea culpa R E C E N T L Y Judicial Watch subpoenas Salon reporters By Jonathan Broder Conservative legal group seeks notes and documents related to Clinton officials and the press (05/08/98) One-man rumor mill bites the dust By David Corn It took the Hubbell tapes disaster to make Dan "Scumbag" Burton part with Clinton-hating ideologue David Bossie (05/07/98) A cry against the swine By Lori Leibovich The last angry newsman: Pete Hamill flays the press (05/06/98) Investigating a conflict By Murray Waas Kenneth Starr is proposing an "independent" investigator to look into the David Hale payments probe. The question is, how independent? (05/05/98) The testament according to Newt By David Wallis The speaker on adultery, meanness, religion and what character he would most like to play in a movie (05/04/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Changing partners Arianna Huffington spurns Newt and the Republicans, finds liberal friends and cares for the poor. BY CAROL LLOYD She was the Pearl Mesta of the Republican Revolution. Every big-name conservative in Washington supped at her table. Newt Gingrich listened to her advice. Highly ambitious -- some said ruthless -- she was a force to be reckoned with. Now, disillusioned with the "intellectual bankruptcy" of the GOP Congress, Arianna Huffington has turned against her old cronies and refashioned herself as a satirical commentator who fraternizes with media lefties like Harry Shearer, Al Franken and Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer. Her conservative distrust of government has lately become tempered by a concern for America's increasingly two-tiered society. Her latest activist endeavor is as chairman of the Center for Effective Compassion, a nonprofit policy and media group aimed at providing an alternative, nongovernment safety net for the nation's poor. As a single mother of two young daughters, she embodies a combative mix of identities: a millionaire who has vowed to fight poverty; a political commentator who earnestly preaches the power of satire; a Republican who constantly quotes her progressive friends. Whether she's cracking dirty jokes on "Politically Incorrect," condemning Newt Gingrich for abdicating the leadership of the GOP, or sermonizing on the need to bridge the poverty divide, Huffington still relishes the opportunity to speak her mind. She is also an author, most recently of "Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom," a first-person Alice in the White House fantasy of an overnight stay at the Lincoln bedroom. Traipsing through the news-driven scandals of the day, she meets a talking Socks, a peeping television, a hot-tubbing Newt and -- of course -- a commander in chief with wandering hands. The book has a gleeful surface -- as if written in naughty spurts: "Hey, what if the television could see me undress?" But inside this bright tissue-paper wrapping, Huffington has planted the seeds for her "postpartisan" political agenda, an agenda she says she hopes will find an audience among those who have tuned out of old-fashioned, two-party politics. During an interview at Salon's offices recently, she was unpretentious, gracious and cheerfully answered any question thrown her way. Between cell phone calls about arranging her daughter's birthday party, she talked about the "right-wing conspiracy," Kenneth Starr, why she turned on Newt Gingrich and why the American economy is like the Titanic. Initially when Hillary Clinton suggested that there was a right-wing conspiracy, many people on the left and the right thought that she was being paranoid. Now it seems that there's some basis for her statements, what with Richard Mellon Scaife possibly funneling money to Starr's key witnesses. Is there truth to the notion that the Clinton scandals are a political plot? Absolutely. Increasingly, all these scandals are exposing the corruption of the political class. We have two political parties but one political class. The concerted efforts on both the left and the right to take out the other side is not unusual. But there are certain things that have nothing to do with Richard Scaife. The way that Hillary Clinton used the term was as if the "vast right-wing conspiracy" had created Monica Lewinsky and her husband's alleged affair. And it's not just whether there was any sexual involvement but whether there was an attempt to keep her quiet through giving her jobs, whether there was an attempt to suborn perjury. All these things are not products of any concerted effort -- they either happened or did not happen. That's what's under investigation. But corruption is not limited to the Clinton administration. When you have both chairmen of the two parties -- Don Fowler and Haley Barbour -- clearly lying to the [Sen. Fred] Thompson committee about fundraising efforts and nobody caring and nobody taking any steps to stop it, it's just promoting people's tuning out of politics; and that's my greatest concern. N E X T+P A G E+| Hillary the enabler