We are 96 out of 100, Yay

Posted by Alan Childress

In the internet voting for the ABA’s Top 100 Law Blogs of 2008, we sit currently at 96th.  Even all the blogs in the Quirky category are hammering us. Please do not vote [here] for our blog, before Jan. 2, as there is something humiliating about being 96th that, ironically, would earn sweet countercultural redemption if we become the actual last place, 100th.

It is  a little like how the person graduating last in his or her class from the U.S. military academies gets a dollar from all the other grads, but being nearly dead-last gets nada (except having that fact mentioned a lot if one runs for president a half century later).  Or how very unpopular politicians now go around citing their unpopularity as some proof that history will redeem them — somehow, counterintuitively, the long-term redemption is more likely if one is anathema or toxic now.  (As if a basic tenet of democracy, that people’s views of a politician predict his or her abilities and competence, is necessarily nonsense.)  Anyway, if our readers succeed in making us 100th, it is inevitable that history will judge us well, via the Truman effect.  Thank you.