Arianna Huffington made a grand gesture - a fleet of buses for people to attend Jon Stewart's rally to D.C. to protest...well, apparently they are protesting the protesting by right wing people against Obama in 2010 that was a 'hallmark of democracy' when leftwing people in 2005 did it against Bush.
This took people at the financially-strapped Huffington Post site by surprise, though they recovered quickly. “Arianna has a sixth sense for promotion, for capturing lots of attention,” said HuffPo President Greg Coleman in an interview TheWrap. “We were surprised when she made that offer. She didn’t tell us. But inside the Huffington Post this does nothing to hurt our revenues.”
By 'sixth sense' he clearly meant, 'she doesn't know what she is doing and holy cow, that is a lot of money to waste'. And he is using financial double-speak - of course a marketing expense does nothing to hurt your revenue - one if revenue and one is expense, they are separate parts of the P&L. But his statement probably made Huffington feel better, since she has apparently never looked at a P&L.
She isn't all that truthful historically, so her pledge to fill “as many buses as there are people to fill them” might not be a sinkhole for money but she is impetuous so maybe it will. Stewart was buying it - "Oh my God, Arianna just Oprah'ed the buses!"
So much for the supposed fiscal discipline they were trying to show.
