The Inscrutable Wisdom of Arianna Huffington

Does launching one hit website qualify you as an internet-age oracle? Arianna Huffington sure seems to think it does.

I give Huffington a lot of credit for doing what some people thought couldn't be done: turning a collection of Hollywood vanity blogs into a huge success, in terms of both dollars and influence.

But that success doesn't make faux-deep pronouncements like this one any less nonsensical:

[T]he next big thing on the Internet will be a paradox: connecting in order to learn how to better disconnect from our always connected lives and reconnect with ourselves -- which is, after all, the ultimate connection.

Got that? With insights like these, Huffington ought to be leading an EST seminar, or writing self-help books. (Oh, wait.) Compared to Huffington, Tom "The World Is Flat" Friedman is a paragon of pithy, concrete wisdom.

Of course, the beauty of vague but portentous-sounding prophecies is no matter what actually comes to pass, you get to tell people you were right. And those people will actually pay money to attend the conference where you're saying it.

Arianna Huffington photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images.