huffington post deal: millions made on backs of free labor #p2

This is probably the most devastating piece I've read on the HuffPo/Aol merger. From Truthdig:

Any business owner who uses largely unpaid labor, with a handful of underpaid, nonunion employees, to build a company that is sold for a few hundred million dollars, no matter how he or she is introduced to you on the television screen, is not a liberal or a progressive. Those who take advantage of workers, whatever their outward ideological veneer, to make profits of that magnitude are charter members of the exploitative class. Dust off your Karl Marx. They are the enemies of working men and women. And they are also, in this case, sucking the lifeblood out of a trade I care deeply about. It was bad enough that Huffington used her site for flagrant self-promotion, although the cult of the self has reached such dizzying proportions in American society that such behavior is almost expected. But there is an even sadder irony that this was carried out in the name of journalism.

rest at http://www.thedailybanter.com/tdb/2011/02/chris-hedges-slams-arianna-huffington-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fbenfu1%2Ftdb+%28The+Daily+Banter%29