How to Have Savantlike People Skills: Ask A Question About the Other Person

The most amusing few sentences of this too-long but entertaining New Yorker profile of Arianna Huffington:

In the higher echelons of New York and Los Angeles society, merely asking a question about someone else is taken as evidence of savantlike people skills, but Huffington’s attempts at establishing intimacy can seem almost poignantly forced. “How do you recharge?” she will inquire of a relative stranger. “What is your favorite food?” Billy Kimball, the comedy writer, said, “She has that European woman’s gift of listening to you in a way that makes a person feel simultaneously fascinating and foolish. The person kind of fills in the end of the sentence, saying a little more than he necessarily wanted to.”