Crooks and Liars!

I absolutely adore this video blog. You can tell, right from the start, it’s about politics (Of course, Right?). The intriguing part about this video blog is its political basis without being particularly biased to a specific party or candidate. It offers a large assortment of video clips ranging from serious to humorous on important issues and “They said what??” topics. To keep the friendly debate atmosphere the Vlog offers several authors with different viewpoints.

Each topic seems well-researched and founded, offering several credible links to sources, giving information on the speaker or perpetrator. The authors and regular followers of the blog have varying degrees of political experience ranging from those that hold/held political office to the savvy regular Joe with an outstanding opinion.

Crooks and Liars has been around for some time now, and has become a staple in online political debate. You can browse for a minute and leave a comment on a single issue, get some furor off your chest, and walk away feeling like an accomplished politician. On the other hand, you can spend hours analyzing the debates of the moment and past and report back to your friends a well-educated professor of modern issues with a kick in your step. The information presented and overall layout of the blog is well done and simplistic enough that anyone can stumble in and immediately have their attention kidnapped by an onslaught of ideas and video clips. The website has an extensive cache of information and topics that would take days to unravel.

One of the many well-played amenities of the blog is the equal playing field on which you voice your opinion. No one cares you didn’t graduate from an Ivy League institution. You’re entitled to your opinion everywhere and Crooks and Liars advocates the input of personal opinions vehemently. People of every age group can converse there with the same desire: to be heard! Nothing strikes my fancy quite like arguing politics with middle aged contemporaries. It’s not uncommon for an older writer to be surprised when s/he learns the personality that just debated them into a hole was significantly younger. Still, the debates remain friendly for the most part and a general respect for differentiation is always present.

I think Vlogs are an exceptional alternative to the normal black and white method of delivering a message. Many people take in information much better from a visual display, while others walk away with more from the traditional written message. The video blog offers both. A person’s personal humors and tastes come out vibrantly in a video blog, and this ensures there’s never a lack of exciting content. Crooks and Liars stands out as one that did it right, and that’s probably the reason such a controversial-by-nature blog has managed to last.

-Brandon