Or is it time to get down to serious business?

If you're confounded by the interminable ability of Arianna Huffington to annoy people and remain a celebrity, get ready: she's starting a "group blog":

The Observer has learned that Warren Beatty, the 68-year-old actor and director, will likely join a lineup of liberal all-stars who will "group blog" on a Web site to be launched next month by columnist Arianna Huffington.

"I probably will," Mr. Beatty said, on the phone from his production office in Los Angeles.

The "Huffington Report," as Ms. Huffington has dubbed it, will also feature such boldface bloggers as Senator Jon Corzine, David Geffen, Viacom co-chief Tom Freston, Barry Diller, Tina Brown and Gwyneth Paltrow. If the name seems to echo that of the Drudge Report—the mega-site operated by the rightward-tilting unofficial editorial director of America’s news cycle, Matt Drudge—well, it’s supposed to. And Mr. Beatty approved of that.

Though he's supposed to be a liberal icon, Beatty lacks the crystallizing vision of a Reagan. His politics are a muddle. It's not happenstance that he is backed by such an odd assortment of people, ranging from Republican populist Huffington to earnest liberal Bill Moyers. Beatty is not cynical: He desperately believes the political system is broken and needs fixing. He just seems unable to explain how it's broken and how it should be fixed.

In interviews, Beatty repeatedly chokes when asked for specific political ideas. He seems vaguely to believe that there is too much money in politics, corporations are too powerful, welfare reform was wrong, and race is a big problem. He says he wants to conjure up the spirit of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968. Bulworth, the closest thing to a Beatty political platform, is a mess as political science--an incoherent, condescending slop about the evils of lobbyists and the innate decency of black folk.

And a yawn.

Really now, am I supposed to take this seriously? Let us suppose for the sake of argument that I break with my habit, and take, um, Arianna Huffington, and, er, Warren Beatty, seriously. I remember when Arianna Huffington was a Republican. At least, she married a Republican who ran against Dianne Feinstein and lost and she divorced him and he "came out" or something. She didn't seem to have much to offer by way of principles then.

And she doesn't now.

But then, would it not be less than serious for me to expect principles? In politics? Isn't it like tar and water? Actually, that's either/or thinking -- a sort of moral absolutist position. Which is why I'm hesitant to take politics of any kind too seriously. (Good way to make a complete fool of yourself....)

Still, I think there are degrees of lack of integrity. A smell test, if you will. And the Huffington kind of opportunism just doesn't pass mine. Even assuming all politicians are opportunists, there's something about changing political positions the way an actor might a wardrobe, calculating them for maximum flash and public attention, which turns me off completely.

Sanctimonious moral posing is another thing which I'd rather ridicule than take seriously. I looked for Huffingtonreport.com and while the web site isn't up yet, here's the ownership information:

Registrant:
Jonah Peretti
Jonah Peretti
301 Elizabeth St #5k
New York, New York 10012
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: HUFFINGTONREPORT.COM
Created on: 17-Jan-05
Expires on: 17-Jan-07
Last Updated on: 28-Feb-05

Administrative Contact:
Peretti, Jonah jonah@eyebeam.org
Jonah Peretti
301 Elizabeth St #5k
New York, New York 10012
United States
6462624442

Jonah Peretti has already had his 15 minutes of fame. Last year, he ordered a pair of customizable Nikes online. He asked Nike to stitch the word "sweatshop" into them. Nike refused. Peretti and Nike exchanged a series of emails, which ended with Peretti's message: "I have decided to order the shoes with a different iD, but I would like to make one small request. Could you please send me a color snapshot of the 10-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?"

The series of emails between Peretti and Nike became an overnight email sensation. Peretti had sent the text of the exchange to a only few close friends. Through the power of the Internet, he became a minor celebrity.

But perhaps Arianna is shaking down Nike by playing good cop/bad cop. Here she is, praising Nike for having

moved to the cutting edge of environmentally conscious production techniques....

Hey, being annoying isn't funny at all.

It's serious business!