The press barons of yore were alpha males whose giant shadows shaped the way the world received its news: men like Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, and Harold Ross. In the twenty-first century, this glass ceiling was shattered with an infusion of estrogen when a Greek colossus emerged to stand astride the shores of media.
In the 1980s, Helen Gurley Brown had taken a giant footstep when she assumed the reins as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. She had not only shown that a woman could excel in a traditionally male position, she also created a new demographic. Before Helen took her place atop the masthead, Cosmopolitan had been targeting married suburbanites preoccupied with raising the perfect child and making the perfect Jell-O salad. She changed it into a how-to-guide for bagging a billionaire, as she felt becoming a trophy wife was, after all, the Holy Grail.
Her successor was the Athens-born Arianna Stassinopoulos in 1950. Her father, Constantine, was a journalist; her mother, Elli, immigrated to Greece from Russia after the Russian Revolution. Her parents met at a sanatorium after World War II, where Constantine was recovering from his two-year incarceration in German concentration camps and Elli was recovering from tuberculosis. She had been told that because of her illness she would never have children, yet at their wedding she was visibly pregnant. Despite Constantine’s name, which calls to mind the word “constant,” his eyes wandered to women other than his wife. Eleven-year-old Arianna encouraged her mother to leave, saying, “You’re not happy and you should be.” Elli found an apartment where she lived with Arianna and her younger daughter, Agapi. One of her favorite sayings to her children was that their education would be their dowry.
At age sixteen, Arianna saw a magazine picture of Cambridge University, and her mother, an advocate of the idea that “dreams do not just have to be for sleeping,” encouraged her impossible dream. Everyone else told her she was being ridiculous, as her English—and funds—were limited. She ended up with a partial scholarship, and Elli supplied the rest by borrowing from her brothers and selling her jewelry and family carpets. In 1969, Arianna traded the shores of the Aegean for the halls of British academia, where she lived in one room with a heater which she fed with shillings. Her arrival coincided with the apogee of the hippie movement, when Carnaby Street was at its most hedonistic. The strait-laced and serious Arianna never partook of rock ’n’ roll, and refused even a puff of marijuana. She also felt alienated by her fellow classmates, who were not comfortable with the almost six-foot Greek girl who was neither from their country or their class. As an outlet, she joined the debating club and became immediately smitten. Her less-than-charitable peers referred to the newcomer who sat entranced at the debates as Starryanna Comeacropppalos. Despite her heavy accent, she became its president.
A pivotal event in Arianna’s life occurred in 1971, when she appeared on the BBC classical music quiz show Face the Music. One of the other panelists was Bernard Levin, the lionized leading columnist for the London Times. By the end of the taping, he had invited her to dinner. He was twice her age and half her size and not of her faith—he was Jewish—but she was gaga. She recalled, “All I remember is that I spent the week prepping, getting myself up to the date on Northern Ireland, the latest developments in the Soviet Union, and the latest Wagner recordings.” Her homework paid off, and the two became a couple with Levin in the role of Svengali. She stated of the man whom she called the big love of her life, “He used to say that going to bed with him was a liberal education.” Not exactly the education her mother had in mind, but he proved to be a brilliant Henry Higgins.
Arianna graduated from Cambridge with a MA in economics in 1972, and the former debater, perennially seduced by the written word, wrote The Female Woman, a direct rebuttal of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Its premise was that the Women’s Movement denigrated marriage and motherhood. To promote her first literary endeavor, her publisher scheduled an appearance with Barbara Walters. The twenty-three-year-old was not fazed, since she had never heard of either the Today Show or its famous host. In London, she became a journalist and published articles in the British editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, as well as maintaining a column in the Daily Mail and The Spectator. She also threw herself into the London social swirl, attending every party of any distinction, usually on the arm of Levin. Although the two were soul mates, the fly in their romantic bubble was that he was a committed bachelor and Arianna longed for commitment. Following her own youthful advice to her mother, “You’re not happy and you should be,” Arianna ultimately broke off their ten-year relationship.
In 1980, Arianna came to New York to promote her third book, a bestselling biography on Maria Callas. As it turned out, the author, even more than her book, became the toast of the Big Apple. Encouraged by her success and wanting to put distance between her and Levin, she remained in the States. Soon she was hosting grand parties at her East Side duplex for the glitterati, including Barbara Walters, Henry Kissinger, Ann Getty, Dr. Salk, and Dan Rather. There were also dinners at the Reagan White House and grand charity balls where Arianna, clad in designer gowns and Bulgari jewels, appeared with trophy dates such as California Governor Jerry Brown and garnered space in the gossip columns. The Upper East Side socialite was described as “the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus.” Yet she was not without her detractors; a Los Angeles magazine once referred to her as “the Sir Edmund Hillary of social climbers.” Despite the heady social milieu, in 1984, mother in tow, she relocated to Los Angeles to join her sister and finish her fifth book; its subject was Pablo Picasso.
At age thirty-five, Arianna was desperate to clasp the brass ring of marriage and motherhood. The heiress Ann Getty assisted in that endeavor by providing a list of eligible men. She arranged an introduction at her San Francisco mansion to Roy Michael Huffington, Jr., who was thirty-eight, handsome, tall, and so reclusive that only five people had his home telephone number. He was also co-owner, along with his sister, of Huffco, a Texas oil company founded by their billionaire father. Arianna and Michael were married in New York six months later, in a spectacular wedding for which matchmaker Getty footed the bill. Gracing the bride’s earlobes were vast diamond earrings on loan from Princess Michael of Kent. The guest list of five hundred was comprised of the crème de la crème of Manhattan and Los Angeles. Barbara Walters was a bridesmaid. The power couple moved to Washington, where her husband pursued a political career masterminded by his wife, whom critics referred to as a “right-wing Lady Macbeth.” His aspirations culminated in an unsuccessful Senate bid to the personal tune of thirty million dollars.
After a stillbirth, the couple had daughters Christina and Isabella. However, the girl from the country that gave birth to drama was destined to have more than her fair share. Several years into their marriage, Michael confided he had engaged in adulterous affairs—with men. It was not a deal breaker; however, after he outed himself in an interview in Esquire, the couple agreed to a divorce. Arianna claimed that she did not know of his homosexual inclinations, but others say she had been blinded by his bling. A friend remarked, “Honey, when they fixed me up with Michael in Houston, I knew he was gay at shrimp cocktails, and Arianna’s smarter than I am.” Arianna’s closing comment? “I don’t believe in marriage, just really good divorces.”
After undergoing a transition to the political left, Arianna made an unsuccessful bid to be elected governor of California—the Greek lost to Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2005, Arianna launched the Huffington Post, which started as a political blog before branching out to other venues, many of which lie along the gossip grapevine. Approximately two thousand unpaid bloggers contribute—she is undoubtedly the world’s most accomplished networker—including friends such as Norman Mailer, Walter Cronkite, Larry David, and Nora Ephron. Vanity Fair described its debut as “the biggest burst of star power to ever hit the blogosphere.” However, upon its debut, the verdict was harsh. LA Weekly wrote, “Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the movie equivalent of Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one.” Many of the vitriolic barbs seemed to be aimed at its founder; the Boston Herald sniped at its founder, calling her “a woman who changed her politics like Jennifer Lopez switches husbands”; another denounced her as “an intellectual lap dancer.” Despite—or because of—the huge amount of controversy, the site took off and receives millions of hits per month.
Arianna, who set up her online news agency on a shoestring, sold it to AOL for $315 million and still retains full editorial control. In addition to her many-splendored bank accounts—from billionaire ex and the Huffington Post, LaHuff is on speed dial on her several Blackberries—with the world’s most famous: Barack Obama, Oprah, and the Dalai Lama.
Whatever one’s perspective on LaHuff, opponents beware: as with the big bad wolf in the classic child’s tale, if angered—with the help of her bloggers, she can huff and puff. . . .