Arianna Huffington is brilliant. Her intellect is usually ignored by her detractors, who focus on her relentless ambition. Old-fashioned sexism taints so many pieces critical of Huffington that one sometimes feels a strong urge to defend her from the charge that she's cannibalizing and destroying American journalism.

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It is, as most things Tina Brown–related are, a breathless, truly fabulous statement of intent. "Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named," the announcement reads, "will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context." I feel like there might be a test to get a subscription. Godspeed, readers, who will now have to access your Muslim rage and your racist baby and your gay Obama who needs to hit the road in your highly mobile, sophisticated context way. Whatever that is. Not mentioned: declining ad pages and the fact that as recently as last March, Brown was admitting, "We aren’t making money yet and we won’t make money for another couple of years."

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The Huffington Post reports that the soups will be sold at Target for a meager 75 cents each! That’s lower than the price of a regular can of Campbell’s soup — so pretty much the opposite of how limited-edition products are usually priced.

I’m not positive, but I think this might be the first soup-based product collaboration from the Andy Warhol Foundation. And the foundation is getting into another area for the first time this fall: makeup. As with the soup, I’m not sure how that didn’t happen sooner.

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A Huffington Post rep told me that the makeup artists are paid by the makeup company Fresh. "Off the Mat," the "evangelical" yoga organization, handled the yoga instructors and masseuses, who are all volunteers.

In addition, Huffington Post donated $40,000 to Off the Mat, so not paying the masseuses wasn't a cost-saving measure. To my mind that makes it worse, frankly -- $40,000 to some group dedicated to healing the world through stretching, nothing for people doing actual work at HuffPo's Oasis.

Here's Off the Mat's mission statement:

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Over the past year, David helped lead Salon through a period of strong growth and reinvigorated Salon’s reputation as a leading destination for political and cultural news. Now, with Cindy’s experience building the Huffington Post from a scrappy start-up to a media juggernaut, we’re excited to continue expanding our reach and social engagement with innovative new features, functions and strategies.

In the coming months, you can expect to see the same high quality of independent journalism on Salon, but infused with a new spirit of innovation. Our goal is not only to continue publishing some of the best news and entertainment journalism on the Web, but to reemerge as a technological leader of online media by experimenting with emerging platforms, new data sets and new ways of interacting with stories.

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He intuitively understood how the media work even if he needed to invent a grand conspiracy to explain the motivations of its primary actors. He knew that if the press felt it had missed a major story from an unexpected source, it would quickly rush to be the first to publicize further material from that source in the future. He learned this from Matt Drudge, who really did become the de facto "assignment editor" of the political press following his publication of Michael Isikoff's axed Lewinsky story. The parallel right-wing press has been in existence for years, and the early conservative blogosphere organized itself around blogs from people like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, but Breitbart was an expert in forcing their obsessions into the "mainstream."

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Now for the bad news: At some point the Huffington Post's gloriously deranged "Living" section was replaced by "Aol Health Living." It still has Deepak Chopra, but there seems, upon a cursory perusal, to be a lot less "integrative medicine" and all-natural holistic cure-alls peddled by Hollywood quacks. It looks like anti-vaccine nut Jenny McCarthy last contributed to the HuffPo way back in January.

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The big headline from the president's little talk is that he bashed the Huffington Post – twice! First, he told the college Republicans in attendance that he knows they consider him a liberal president, while "if you read the Huffington Post, you'd think I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can't be true." But I was much more interested in Obama's later comments about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, because he captures a complexity that's often missed by people on the left – but he misses some complexity, too.

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You know, one these videos is worth a thousand anti-bullying PSAs because for once, the smartest kid in the room is also the coolest. And also the bravest; can you imagine the kind of chutzpah it would take to be 18 and just own it like Alaine does?

Oh, also, Alaine was named Governor's Scholar in the state of Kansas. What did you accomplish in high school? (Hi, Alaine, I'm friending you on Facebook right now. Let's hang out.)

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This tragicomic premise is what makes the Sundance short "Successful Alcoholics" so uncomfortably funny. Lizzy Caplan ("Party Down," "Cloverfield" -- and as I personally think of her -- "The better Zooey Deschanel") and T.J. Miller (also "Cloverfield") play a couple whose severe drinking problem not only doesn’t affect their jobs ... but actually helps them. They get out of traffic tickets, go to dinner parties topless, and somehow still hold down high-paying jobs.

"What a wonderful world," you think? Not quite. "Successful Alcoholics" is now playing in its entirety over at the Huffington Post (through FunnyorDie, which has for some reason removed the video) and is worth every wincingly funny, sad moment.

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I also understand that PopEater is not Huffington Post, but rather an affiliated website also owned by AOL. These are all true things. And yet, I can't help feeling like today's sidebar is detracting from the website's credibility somehow.

For those of you wondering about the "white stuff," it turned out to be chocolate. And for those wondering who Vanessa Hudgens is, maybe you need to read more Huffington Post and/or watch "High School Musical." 

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For a complete list of nominees, check out the Webby Awards website, and vote for your favorites. If you don't have the time to go through every viral video category, here's a couple of  under the radar gems you should definitely check out:

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I am all for veganism, vegetarianism, whatever, but I am also a big fan of "live and let live" mentality. I also don't like to be given health advice by someone who lost so much weight on her last film that people were legitimately scared for her well-being. Let's just say, I would not buy that person's brand of vegan shoes, because there are a lot of shoes out there that are technically "vegan" (i.e., not leather) and do not cost $355.

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Only two Democrats in the last 90 years have been reelected to a second term -- Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. The rest of the Democrats have seen their presidencies cut short, and so the historical odds of Obama winning a second term are at first glance not encouraging.

What? That is technically factual and completely dishonest. Truman and Johnson -- Democrats -- were both elected to full terms after assuming the presidency. The only recent presidents to lose elections after serving full terms were Carter and Bush and Hoover. The only other president to lose an election instead of resigning or dying was Ford.

Another way to put this is: "Only four incumbent presidents have been defeated in elections in the last 90 years, and three of those presidents were Republicans, so Obama is sitting pretty." Or: "In the last 100 years, a nice round century, nearly all presidents who served a full term and then ran for reelection were reelected."

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Now, Mr. Breitbart is not just a conservative pundit. He is a crusading propagandist who publishes a wide variety of untruths and smears across his "Big" websites. He is not guilty of having the wrong opinions, he is guilty of being a shameless, race-baiting bully.

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• A stray Oklahoma city puppy was euthanized two Friday's ago. On Saturday morning? Alive and well. (AP)
• Daniel Kish once was blind but now can see. He did it by teaching himself echolocation. (Men's Journal)
• A dad makes the best out of a job rejection letter by ripping it up to the delight of his baby (Yahoo):

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Colbert followed up with a complaint that HuffPost yet again recycled his content by posting his video. And then things get really confusing:

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Since she became a prominent public figure as the wife of a multimillionaire running for the U.S. Senate in 1994, Huffington has been a darling of Bill Clinton-bashing conservatives and a heroine for liberals railing against President George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

She disavowed have any interest in becoming a political candidate herself during her husband's unsuccessful campaign only to make an aborted run for California governor in 2003. She has been criticized for falling under the influence of self-help gurus and hailed for having the courage to pursue her own convictions.

Along the way, she has been proven she can be both charming and antagonizing -- sometimes all within a few minutes of conversation punctuated in her distinctive Greek accent.

"She is a force of nature. It can really be something to watch her in action," said Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor who has gotten to know Huffington while writing a blog about online media. "She is one of those people who will tell you, 'We simply must do this' and will persuade you to do it. She believes she can change the world."

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