Good company or odd bedfellows?

What, you might ask, does Arianna Huffington have in common with George W. Bush, Pope Benedict, Hugo Chavez and Matt Drudge? They are all among Time magazine's "100 people whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world." She, of course, is the Brentwood author and founder of The Huffington Post who has long been a mainstay of KCRW's Left, Right & Center. Time turned to Art Streiber for the portrait and let Al Franken do the written honors. Excerpt:

I first met Arianna in 1995 at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. We had both been invited by the Washington Times, and I insisted on sitting next to the striking Greek-born redhead (though not, strictly speaking, redheaded-born Greek). We hit it off. Arianna introduced me to her friend Newt Gingrich. I told her the Gingrich revolution was a fraud....

No doubt because of my (persuasive) prowess and Arianna's intellectual openness, she switched, becoming a lefty. With her indefatigable persistence, resourcefulness and good humor, Arianna, 55, has gone from ambitious project to ambitious project with varying degrees of success, finding herself the proprietor of the widely read, hugely influential liberal blog Huffington Post. None of this would have happened were it not for me....Arianna should be writing about me.

The Time 100 is in the May 8 issue; on Thursday, LAT op-ed columnist Joel Stein will weigh in on the Time website with his own Joel 100.

Photo: Art Streiber/Corbis Outline