Upon arriving at The Hopeful Cynic I first thought, ‘Whoa, that is a mountain of content!’. The site borders on intimidating and the eye gets lost within the reams of copy, links and choices. Can you have too much of a good thing?
The focus of this blog is news and politics. The author offers his take on these issues both cynically and hopefully. The author is very articulate and intelligent, his opinions are well formulated with content from news sources from all over the web. It was difficult to find much information about the author himself however.
Most importantly, ergo the name of the site, he is cynical. As a closet cynic, I can appreciate much of what the author says (whether I agree or not). One might expect a news and heavy content blog to be dry. THC is a refreshing and often humorous look at news. The author doesn’t take his cynicism too seriously either, from ‘A Horse’s New Best Friend’ : ‘I don’t think the horses care too much about the industrial design, but they probably like that it is ‘designed for comfort, security and maximum ejaculatory response.’ Check out the step-by-step guide to the EquiMount, including the all important step #4: “Introduce stallion to the EquiMount.’ I’m just picturing Mr. Ed saying ‘Aw, guys, you shouldn’t have.’ -smirk-
The news content focuses on whatever has interested the author on any given day. There were entries about racism in Minnesota, being a Hooker for Halloween (this story was simply disturbing) and of course the election. The author is an admitted Republican but has a great entry entitled, ‘A Message to Kerry voters and Democrats’. It is an interesting read regardless what side of the fence you are sitting on.
The entries themselves offer different options to use his research/content as well. You can e-mail an article, comment on an article and link to an article. The website design is rather spartan, clearly content here is king. There is an occasional picture to complement the story but there is primarily loads of text, quotes and statistics. The colors used are primarily gray and white, this makes reading off the screen pretty easy. *Note, there is at least one link to a site with ‘adult oriented material’.
If news and politics is your cup of tea, you can enjoy a pipping hot pot of it at The Hopeful Cynic. I certainly didn’t think there was too much of a good thing here. The author tries to balance hope and cynicism (heh, good luck) with more success that I thought humanly possible. Regardless of your views this site will challenge you to think, which I believe fewer people seem to be do these days. Kudos to the author, you have some really insightful stuff here.The Hopeful Cynic