On Becoming Quotable

As I was writing the previous posts yesterday about Stephen Colbert and thinking about his fearless performance in front of the most powerful people in the world, I got an email from Arianna asking if she could use my comments in her book on fearlessness. Of course I said...oh Arianna Huffington from Huffington Post...I said absolutely, Arianna, you can use my comments anytime....

Ok, I feel like you people are waiting for a punch line. I really did get email from Arianna yesterday. She's recently been posting excerpts of her new book on her blog and I read them and made a few salient and perspicuous comments, you know like the stuff I write here on this blog all the time, which she understandably would like to include in her new book.

I'm not smoking or drinking anything and I am awake. And this is the thing that is cool about Arianna Huffington. Not that she wants to include my comments in her book. But that she gets this medium. She is one of the few people who came from the conventional press who gets what the web and the blogosphere are and what their potential is. I wish more authors would share their work prior to publication on the web and in blogs. She gets some snarky comments on her blog from time to time from people who call it self-promotion. If it is it is very smart self-promotion, but looking at it this way completely misses the point and is a comment made by people who don't get it. Arianna, don't listen to the haters.

What she is doing is good for both authors and readers because people get to read exceprts from a book that isn't out yet and they don't even have to get dressed. It is something that would have not been possible before the web and before blogging. It's about being open and sharing information and using the potential of the medium to that end. But that is not the only way she gets it. Her encouragement of celebrity bloggers on HuffPo, though occasionally overzealous, is good for the blogosphere and good for those who choose to use it. The Contagious Festival and the whole idea of HuffPo is very forward thinking. She is on the vanguard of what the future of journalism will be. While networks like CNN - the most trusted name in news, have "blog reporters" who tell you what's on the blogs, and commentators who read email from viewers on TV, but you can't find the email on their site. They believe that they are Internet savvy. They still don't get it.

Arianna has also been named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. Not that I put much stock in lists of that kind or any kind. Not really something I would have paid much attention to at all in fact. But in her case I think Time got it right. And for those of you who think I'm saying these things because she asked to quote me in her book, you couldn't be more...well, Ok, that did help. But I would have said them anyway. And I won't cheapen all of this by saying she's hot. I respect her for her mind.

Oh and finally, I hope Arianna won't be jealous that George Clooney will be a guest blogger on A Revolution of One blog soon. He happened to catch one of my posts and started reading the whole blog and decided he did want to blog after all.... Ok, that part is a joke. But the rest is real. I swear.