The Way Of Ginger - article 10

Excuse my insert of pop culture, but there is this movie, called “Casino”. Character Sam Rothstein (Robert DeNiro) gives a voice over introduction to his future wife and hot mess hooker with a heart of gold, 'Ginger' (Sharon Stone).

“Ginger had the hustler’s code. She knew how to take care of people and that’s what Vegas is all about. It’s kickback city. She took care of the dealers, the pit bosses, the floor managers. But mostly she took care of the valet parkers; the guys who get you anything and take care of anything. Ginger took care of the parkers because they took care of the security guards who took care of the metro cops who let her operate.”

This is a very old skool way of thinking. The thought of taking care of those who helped you along the way is something you don’t hear of much of anymore. And this brings me to the subject of this article – The lawsuit between Arianna Huffington/Huffington Post vs. Jonathan Tasini and 9,000 other writers.



On April 7, 2011, AOL paid $315 million to Arianna Huffington (and co-founders Kenneth Lerner & Jonah Peretti) for the purchase of The Huffington Post, while retaining her as editor-in-chief. She sent an email to the independent writers and staff informing them of the good news and thanking them for their service and went back to business as usual.

Tasini, who had been working as one of the independent (which means unpaid) contractors filed a lawsuit suing The Huffington Post, for $105 million. Tasini has his own blog called “The Working Life”. He has written 4 books – most recently one in 2010 called, “It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On; The Scam Of The Deficit Crisis”. Woo, that’s a long title.

In 2001, during the time he served as President of The National Writers Union (1990 – 2003), Tasini charged the NY Times with a copyright infringement lawsuit regarding the use and reuse of writer’s material in electronic media for articles originally optioned for print form. The court sided with the Tasini and the writers.

In 2006 He went up against Hillary Clinton for a U.S. Senate seat. It was at this time Arianna suggested he blog on the Post to gain more exposure. In interview, Tasini noted Arianna wasn’t a big fan of Ms. Clinton at the time; to which I say, who is.

He bid for a Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate in the 2010 New York election. Though he lost both bids, the man is no slouch. Since his initial Huffington Post entry in 2005, Tasini has made over 200 posts.

While I completely agree with the Tasini vs. NY Times lawsuit, the Tasini vs. Huffington Post lawsuit isn’t so clear cut for me. I wonder if this is more of a moral issue rather than a legal one. If I may step in Arianna Huffington’s proverbial 315 million dollar shoes for a minute; I would have shared with those – the writers – who had made the blog the success it became. There wouldn’t have been a question.

Now to the particulars of the 9,000 writers; Good Lawd! , that’s a lot of people. And as for the figure of $105 million, Good Lawd! , that’s a lot of money. I can see maybe 10 people, 100 at the most. And about Tasini’s figure of $105 million; I think I would have looked at how many articles each person posted and factored in how many comments they received along with how many page views and then added a little more just to be generous. I’m sure the payments (or bonus’ which sounds better) out would have equaled several thousand dollars per person.

While to me, it would be natural to give back to those that gave value to my ‘product’, Arianna felt differently. I wonder if she had given out a little something…some gift cards, movie tickets, or a gas card (which would really be valued now) - would this lawsuit have happened.

To be fair, it was Arianna Huffington’s business and the responsibility to make it relevant and successful rested on her’s & Kenneth Lerner’s shoulders. They raised the money to launch the site and they made the decisions. Clearly Arianna was a good front woman and ran the business well, which is why AOL approached her.

She may have started off as the “wife of…” but she quickly made her own mark in the political world. She herself started off as a writer. While married to Michael Huffington, she became popular when she campaigned for her husband who ran for senator in 1994. He lost to Dianne Feinstein and she and Michael divorced in 1997. She teamed up with Al Franken, a junior Minnesotan (is that a word?) U.S. Senator and former SNL alumni (as a writer and performer 1975-80 & 1985-95) for a political commentary show on Comedy Central called “Strange Bedfellows”. It was nominated for an Emmy in the category for Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music Program.

Arianna ran for Governor of California in 2003. She wrote a few books, such as, ‘The 4th Instinct’ and an autobiography on the artist Picasso. She has done a voice over character on an animated series called, “the Cleveland Show”, made guest appearances as herself on several t.v. shows and a whole bunch of other stuff. She’s a go-getter this one; I wish I had such a list of accomplishments.

It would not be a stretch to say she is also one of the reasons The Huffingtion Post is such a success. The contributing writers would be the other reason…but so would the established celebrities and politicians who posted over the years. When something works, it is not because of just one thing; it’s a combination of many things working together like a recipe.

What are the rules for the writers on the Huffington Post? ; There are no rules. Writers have complete control over their own work. They can write about whatever tickles their fancy. They may post it on other web sites and blogs as well as their own.

There was a time when writers and philosophers were considered part of the elite and were regularly asked to dine with Kings and Queens and their words were repeated, analyzed and passed down. Now it’s all about marketing; your talent is minor – sales pitch is major. I wonder how responsible are we for our ‘own hustle’. Or in other words,
once we have attracted attention (however unjustly deserved), is it our responsibility to milk that cow for all it’s worth.

It has been said by Tasini and others that The Huffington Post has been “unjustly enriched” by the blood and sweat of the contributing writer’s. A similar comment was made a few years back about Joe Francis from “Girls Gone Wild” fame. Francis had already made his first million (or so) from putting together clips from graphic depictions of death and violence not able to be shown on mainstream television, and marketed it as “Banned from TV”

As John Milton/Satan (Al Pacino) said at the end of ‘Devil’s Advocate, “Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.” To be sure it was vanity (and booze) that earned Francis up to 40 million dollars a year in annual sales. All he and his crew had to do was offer the ladies a bit of flattery, liquor to fill their already inebriated belly’s, put the camera in their faces, and oh look…the tops and bras melt away from the body. Oh and wait is that your tongue in my mouth? How did that get there? And the crowd screams for more. Francis got a jet plane; the girls got a free t-shirt. This was all they needed to sign their dignity away.

Judgment aside; If a woman had been, more business minded, she would have requested pay. After all, Francis is making a profit on her image. The GGW crew would have probably responded with a, “No way. This place is full of hot girls. We’ll go on to the next one.” The business minded woman would have said, “Bye” and then thought of a way to market her own image. And if you look around on the internet, plenty of women have. One Saturday night I was watching a tv show (Yeah, I know. I need to get a life). They did a top 20 of the most downloaded women. I had never seen or heard of these women before, but they had millions of paying followers. I’m not condoning this; I’m speaking purely on business terms. Here was this group of women; relevant and making money. Shoot, If I thought I had a demographic, I might consider doing a calendar myself (I seemed to have acquired a bit of debt). It would be me, lightly clothed, in tasteful poses and surrounded by various baked goods and other treats. For example; September would be a picture of me in a sea of cupcakes. November could be me laying amongst the fall leaves with different types of cheesecakes nestled in the grass. March would have me in a claw foot tub filled with jelly beans. I think you see the possibilities.

Kim Kardashian made a sex tape with then boyfriend, Ray-J. It was somehow (oh…somehow) leaked and ended up in the hands of Vivid Entertainment, a producer of adult videos. She sued them, but settled for a few million dollars. I guess she decided to take control of her image and as a result turned what should have been an embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning and completely demoralizing situation, into a multi-million dollar empire, for not only her to profit but her entire family. Imagine that. If it had not been for the sex tape; K-Dash would probably still be designing celebrity closets and being referred to as the daughter of one of the lawyers who got OJ off of a double homicide charge.

Suppose one of Tasini’s postings in the Huffington Post landed him a round table appearance on let’s say “Red Eye” or “The Daily Show” or any of the other many cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC…etc. And what if after that appearance, he approached and acquired the attention a publisher, who decided they wanted to expand on one, or many, of Tasini’s ideas. And what if this meeting with the publisher resulted in a book deal which would mean of course, more tv appearances? Would Arianna then be able to sue for acting as a ‘pseudo’ manager and demand her 15-20% of everything Tasini makes as it resulted directly from his post on her blog?

It will be very interesting to see how this case is resolved. Arianna has more than her hands full with the 315 million. Not only does she have the lawsuit with Tasini and the 9,000, but also two men; James Boyce and Peter Daou, are suing her. They are claiming they helped her launch the Huffington Post and got cut out of the deal.

It’s sad because I’m sure at the beginning, they were all friends. To quote Cyndi Lauper’s classic song title from her award winning 1983 album (that’s what we called them back then) ‘She’s So Unusual”; ‘Money Changes Everything’. And it does.

But what do I know; at the end of ‘Casino’ Ginger died broke, turned out in a nasty hooker motel and OD’d on a ‘hot’ dose of speed.