One upwardly mobile Greek

In the October issue of Los Angeles magazine, Steve Oney traces the transformation of Arianna Huffington from first foreign president of the Cambridge Union debating society to lover of Bernard Levin and believer in "divine" John-Roger and his Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awarness, then on to biographer (and accused plagiarizer), loyal Republican wife and conservative party hostess, and finally supreme maven of the "Westside liberal community that now sustains her." He also calls her "one of the city's most polarizing figures."

During this most political of seasons, the Arianna Huffington show has been packing in audiences not only at her Brentwood home (where's hosted functions for everyone from Senator Barbara Boxer to would-be first brother Cam Kerry) but across Los Angeles. They come because she is famous, a figure whose omnipresent electronic reality on CNN and MSNBC enhances her already considerable physical presence—those long legs, that brilliant red plumage, and the unmistakable Greek accent. They come because she is infamous, her transformation from Republican diva to Democratic doyenne being only one of many in her life...

Supportive comments come from Gore Vidal, Warren Beatty and Marc Cooper, but writer Maureen Orth — who profiled Huffington for Vanity Fair in 1994, when she was an earnest conservative provocateur — is aghast: "I'm amazed and appalled that these seemingly sophisticated people in L.A. don't realize who they're dealing with." Even friends call her "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus." Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who observed her at Cambridge, says of Huffington: "She was the first person who made me understand the word celebrity." In the piece, Al Franken takes credit for originating her shift from right toward the left, and he's serious.

Also in the issue (which is not online): Greg Goldin acknowledges that the new Caltrans headquarters downtown "is not the kind of building you automatically fall in love with...[but] deserves our attention and over time may win our affection."