Separated at birth: Maureen Dowd & Arianna Huffington

NEW YORK (February 28, 2007) - Separated at birth and currently by the expansive U.S. Midwest, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, and Los Angeles-based political pundit Arianna Huffington, discovered in January that they were identical twins separated at birth.

"I suppose our striking physical resemblance and almost identical political proclivities should have been a clue," remarked Dowd, in her blog. "Whenever Arianna bashed both George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton in her blog [HuffingtonPost.com], I felt a certain closeness that I couldn't ignore. And when restaurant hostesses all over Manhattan began calling me Ms. Huffington, well, I decided to do a little investigation."

"Over the phone, people constantly confuse me for Zsa Zsa Gabor, but in person, whether at fundraisers or conferences, I began hearing Maureen Dowd, over and over," confirms Huffington, in her public blog confessional. "When I was a guest on CNN last week, the host [Howard Kurtz] referred to my 1999 Pulitzer Prize when he introduced me. I thought, this is really bizarre."

Although current official records differ, a convoluted, international paper trail leads to the adoption of Dowd and Huffington from the same orphanage in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 1953. Huffington was adopted by Konstantinos and Elli Stassinopoulos of Athens, Greece, while Dowd was adopted by Padraic and Caitlin Dowd of County Clare, Ireland, in the same year. Despite wildly different upbringings at opposite corners of Europe, both eventually found themselves in the United States. Both also felt the same inexorable pull towards political commentary.

Huffington's and Dowd's similarities go beyond their shared hatred of prominent Republican and Democratic political leaders, most notably George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton. "We both love cheeseburgers and Thai food," remarked Dowd wistfully, "and neither of us can stand salmon. And we're both allergic to peanuts." Similarly, Huffington writes, "And we both have dogs named Pushinka!"

Since their revelation last month, Huffington and Dowd have met together frequently in Manhattan (Huffington Post's office are based there), and the recently-reunited twin sisters have even planned to visit their birthplace in Romania later this year. They were unable to procure reliable Information about their birth parents, but some suspect that their father was famous dissident Ion Ratiu.