Should We Write the Epitaph on Lefty Blogs?

Provocative Liberal Photoshopping Maybe Be Out of Vogue

The reason I gave up any other semblance of a hobby to blog the weekday nights away is because it's enjoyable to see regular people gripe about everything from politics to the decline of American porn industry. Indeed, we live in some interesting times, and lurking in RSS feeds and writing a few posts now and then forces someone to at least be somewhat aware of what the fuck is going on. I attempt to not just read sites I'm probably going to agree with (Hot Air, Mudville, etc.), but venture into liberal land to get some perspective.

My fundamental political beliefs come from the fact that I believe politicians (and tyrants) will attempt to subvert the public consciousness with false rhetoric. I also believe that patriotism is important for a cosmopolitan nation like America to prevent internal strife based on factional rivalries and that mankind has "natural rights". From there I take a pragmatic approach and end up in the libertarian-conservative camp somehow, but that doesn't mean I hate liberals or anything. I grew up in a liberal city (Ann Arbor) and have spent most of life in liberal states (California, Hawaii, Washington, etc.), so categorically hating lefties would mean I'd have to board up all my windows and live on a diet of canned goods. Sometimes their ideas really piss me off, particularly when they pull stunts like using dead soldiers to get a political point across, but that hatred is probably necessary in a modern democracy.

So I was pretty bummed out when some of the big liberal blogs read like a press release from the Obama camp today. Whatever happened to eternal vigilance?!? Anyways, many of the big lefties were plugging the new Whitehouse.Gov site about two seconds after it went live in some diabolic, orchestrated plot. Daily Kos, Yglesias, and Sullivan were a few of the culprits. Crooks and Liars actually had this to say:

The entire Whitehouse.gov website has been renovated to reflect our new President, Barack Obama. It is a thing of beauty and nearly brought tears to my eyes - again.

Shit, this ain't North Korea, feel free to criticize once in awhile. And the only thing that should make you cry on the internet is 2 Girls, 1 Cup, only because available women shouldn't do such hideous acts. These sycophantic blegs are really advancing the cult of personality that The Obama somehow transcends criticism. He even tried to squash any muckraking during his inaugural speech [Reason]:

"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them—that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."

Scared yet? But, at least Spencer Ackerman and David Weigel are explaining why they laughed at Wheelchair'd Cheney and booed Bush. And Wonkette had some funny pics of tourists leaving trash all over the place in DC. Maybe cynicism and snark aren't totally crushed yet, but give it a few months...