Arianna, why won't you be friends with me?

Arianna Huffington, why won't you be friends with me?

I regularly read (and have my stories posted) on Huffington Post, which has become one of the most trafficked sites out there.

I briefly covered your run for governor during the California recall election working for a small Bay Area paper, and we've met once or twice, here and there, on the 2008 campaign trail.

I'm even a HuffPo blogger!

So when Facebook told me that you were one of the coveted "People you may know," I pounced at the offer to click the "Add as friend" link under your smiling face.

But even though we have a whopping 23 mutual friends, I was rejected.

"Arianna already has too many friends," Facebook informed me.

Just how many friends is too many?

Barack Obama has more than 1 million of them!

Arianna, you can make it up to me the next time I see you.

Until then ...

UPDATE, 4:30 P.M. -- Well that didn't take long! I should have been this pushy in high school.

After sifting through hate mail and lots of "LOL" messages about this blog, I've been offered genuine friendship.

HuffPo community manager Katie Saddlemire writes to tell me that Arianna read my post and actually, "She does want to be your friend!"

"The trouble is, Arianna has 5,000 friends, and Facebook currently doesn't allow personal profiles to have any more than than. There is talk they'll life the limit soon, and when we do, she'll certainly add you as a friend," she tells me.

She also points me to this explanation of why Obama is allowed more.

I assured her I wasn't too worried about it, and that, of course, this blog is meant to be funny.

— Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter,
The Washington Times

Bookmark my blog at http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni
and visit my YouTube page at http://youtube.com/bellantoniwashtimes