The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged

Oh, what happened to the simple life when it was just “us” against Cheney, Bush and the neocons?

Drawing arrows from both sides, FDL’s Pachacutec made a valient attempt yesterday at Huffington Post to uphold the agency of that monolith formerly known as the liberal blogosphere (before the Democratic presidential race managed to pave two opposite lanes right through the middle of it).

Revealing our current, and unfortunate circumstances, Pachacutec — in point number one — outlined the fact that neither Democratic contestant is a Wellstone, a Feingold, a true progressive.  (Rather, either seems equally capable, once elected, of revealing an inner Lieberman.)  And in point number two, Pach, likewise, laments how few liberal blogs have managed to hew the true course, upholding: “behavior as a referee on the process and on the narratives propelled by anyone claiming a Dem label, and toward more of a partisan candidate sorting.”

…Which reminds me of my favorite moment at YearlyKos ’07 (which now seems like years ago):  Sitting around with some big name bloggers, what struck everyone out of the blue, and reduced everyone to dead silence, was the sudden prospect of: What if we win?  (And, who could have imagined that the break up of the unanimity and internal consistency of the liberal ‘sphere might have sunk roots even before we won?)

So, there I was, feeling bad over how much The BAG was guilty of fault #2 — endlessly obsessing on the visual peccadilloes of one Democrat versus the other (with personal biases spilling out liberally in post after post) — when I happened to come upon the image above.  Absent caption or credit, it was just sitting there adorning a UPI story at alaskareport.com in which Obama finally rebuffs Clinton over … well, never mind the rest.  The point is, it allowed me to shift my attention from my own liberal failures to fault #1, involving our two finalists in the nomination sweepstakes.

Unless this was a photoshop job, if that really even mattered, here were BHO and HRC in front of our man, Ché.  No Wellstone, no Finegold, fine.  But then I started to think, if I studied the picture long enough, wouldn’t one of these two suddenly emerge as being the greater potential revolutionary?  And short of that, couldn’t I venture an interpretation or two as to what the picture itself had to say about the question?

But, with Pachacutec’s words still echoing in my mind, I suddenly thought better of it.  If you have thoughts on the quesion, I’d love to hear them.  But I’m not going there today.

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Update 3/12/08 1:11 AM PST:

Daryl Lang at PDN Pulse has revealed that the pic above is actually fake.  Unfortunately, his post also happens to call out The BAG for not just suggesting as much, but adding it “doesn’t matter.”  Just to set the record straight, here’s the comment/explanation I left on the PDNP thread:

The “maybe it doesn’t matter” comment was made as part of a post lamenting how the liberal blogosphere is fracturing over the Hillary vs. Obama question. Unfortunately, in the current atmosphere, the tendency now — in approaching an image such as this — is to necessarily decide if the photo is more advantageous to one candidate versus the other. My point, as a result, is that the veracity of the photo itself — which otherwise matters 100%, as you point out, and which would otherwise guide my visual analysis at BAGnewsNotes — has, from a political standpoint, almost become a peripheral issue.

Bloggers, Netroots and the 2008 Democratic Primary (Pachacutec/Huffington Post)

Obama denies Clinton’s VP overture (alaskareport.com)

(image: unattributed)