People have been lamenting the death of hip hop for about half as long as hip hop has been around, a whiney autophobia that Mos Def best undercut with the right-on observation that “people talk about hip hop like it’s some giant living in the hillside coming down to visit the townspeople.”

Matt Taibbi’s current column up on ad busters on the supposed sorry state of American liberalism is one of those giant in the hillsides type crybaby laments.

The liberalism Taibbi objects to—snooty college kids in Chaiman Mao t-shirts and “noisy Upper West side cocktail parties”—has little, if anything, to do with the Democratic party or the current left-of-center punditsphere.

If anything, the overdeveloped self-righteous urge to Fight The Power that defines these groups (as Taibbi describes it) has turned off any of the smelly dreadlocked/snotty Banana Republic-frocked masses from supporting anything as The Man-ish as a modern day political party.

Ross Douthat’s not buying it either:

The right had the left on the ropes for a long time, but for now, at least, it’s the other way around. Public opinion is going liberalism’s way on everything from gay marriage to taxes to health care to poverty to global warming, and the Iraq War has temporarily undone conservatism’s long-running advantage on foreign policy.

I think they’re largely talking past each other. Matt Taibbi’s smelly liberal giant in the hillside just isn’t coming down to get with the townspeople anymore. The rising wave of public support of left-leaning policy has come about largely because the conservative equivalent of the Chairman-clad masses has taken over the Republican party, a rhetorical extremism that is fundamentally unpalatable to anyone to the left of Ann Coulter.

While the Republicans were staging wide-scale revolts against the likes of Lincoln Chaffee, the Democrats were busy embracing and celebrating guys like Barack Obama and Jim Webb, ideological liberals who approach their liberalism under fundamentally conservative world views of public restraint and personal responsibility. The lunatic fringe Taibbi rightfully finds so disagreeable is largely an isolated entity, with little to no bearing on the current political landscape (and let’s hope it stays that way).

Taibbi should stick to making fun of dying popes.