The Reaction at The Guardian

I was pleasantly surprised to learn today that I was mentioned (and quoted) at The Guardian's website. See here. Needless to say, it's quite an honour, especially for a newer blogger like me. As many of you know, The Guardian is one of the world's best and most respected newspapers, and I'm in the Newsblog section, where a short article on a specific topic is followed up with a round-up of various blogs that have addressed that topic. In this case, it's my recent post on likely successors to Chief Justice Rehnquist -- one of my shorter posts, and one that I wrote rather quickly, but, hey, it's great they liked what I had to say.

It hasn't taken me long to learn that it's tough to get noticed out here in the blogosphere, but in the almost three months I've been doing this I've met some wonderful people, and some excellent blogs now link to me in their blogrolls (see my own blogroll, right sidebar). And quite a few -- like Liberal Oasis, War and Piece, and AmbivaBlog -- have even linked to and/or commented on specific posts at The Reaction. Plus, I post regularly over at Centerfield (where I'm one of the group-bloggers), maintain a Reader Blog at TPM Cafe, and comment regularly at The Decembrist, Political Animal, The Carpetbagger Report, The Moderate Voice, and a few other of my favourite blogs. And that's really what the blogosphere is all about: blogs linking to other blogs, bloggers communicating with other bloggers, all within a virtual community. What I, for one, long for most is a link from the likes of Andrew Sullivan or Kevin Drum or Daily Kos or Instapundit or one of the other major players. But seeing my name (and my blog) at The Guardian's website is quite something, too.

I do apologize for the self-congratulatory nature of this post, but, well, I do need to pat myself on the back every now and then. Given how much work I put into this blog -- hours and hours a day, truly a second job -- it's nice to be rewarded with that kind of recognition.