How informed will I feel afterwards?

After pondering over Billmon's op-ed piece, I've decided to unsubscribe from A-list left wing blogs on my Bloglines account. I figure if they have anything important to say, then I'll surely hear about it through other blogs and I shouldn't waste my time reading blogs that I'm starting to view as counterproductive to influencing the mainstream media's agenda.

Reading Billmon's piece reminded me of a post I saw at Utopian Hell a month ago, Blog for Sale. Astarte wrote about refusing to reading blogs which ran advertisements because their authors were no longer interested in being independent writers. I still somewhat disagree with this, probably because I met Kos and thought he was a cool guy who says whatever the hell he feels like, advertisers be damned. But there's a certain ring of truth to what Astarte says, and maybe I feel that larger blogs aren't independent voices not just because of who advertisers for them, but because they constantly have to kiss Democrat ass to stay popular and keep those advertisements. I don't feel like these bloggers will ever challange the Democratic party line on a story. And since the Democrats have a history of being invertebrates who don't know how to fight back against the right, I'm starting to feel that reading their blogs is pretty useless. I'd much rather read blogs that stick their necks out and are willing to take risks, placing the story above their popularity.