If my metric is "large media institutions making outlandish claims abut my virtues," then it's been a pretty good day or two. But as Matt Yglesias says, it's a bit unnerving to realize just how much of my career is the product of starting a blog during a very narrow window that spanned from 2001 to early-2003. I always say that if I had done the same work on my school paper, no one would have noticed, but it's actually worse than that: A week after starting my first blog, I was rejected from City on a Hill press, Santa Cruz's student newspaper. And it's entirely possible that if I hadn't been rejected from City on a Hill, I would have put a lot of effort into that, and let my little vanity blog expire. Now, of course, it's harder to break into blogging, even as the talent and sophistication of the contenders has rocketed. Dylan Matthews, for instance, is smarter and more informed than I am now, and he's 18. And not 18 in the sense that 18 stands in to dramatize some low number. He's just actually 18. It's terrifying. All of which is to say, luck is important, and more people should be Rawlsians.
