Thanks to OTB, I see that Michelle’s blog, this one you’re reading right now, is the biggest, baddest blog in the world. On behalf of my co-guest bloggers, I’d like to take all of the credit for myself.

Of course I would like to take that credit, but it would be absurd to do so.

This blog’s success is a testament to talent, hard work, and determination to get things right. Michelle’s blog is tops in the ecosystem because she’s proven herself great at the medium. Michelle gets it–she knows how to write short-form snark and long-form dissertations, she knows how to dispense the link-love and how to marshall alliances. She’s a dogged reporter and, contrary to her hate mail, she’s genuinely nice. She deserves her success so much that I can’t even muster up any of the customary jealousy against it.

Even if you’re famous, as Michelle was as an author and columnist before starting this blog, success as a blogger isn’t foreordained. The ’sphere is a real meritocracy for the most part if you don’t count Wonkette’s inexplicable rise. The HuffPo, for instance, is populated by famous people but it’s pretty much unreadable tripe if you don’t count Greg Gutfeld’s posts–which are great mostly because they skewer the HuffPo itself. Famous deep thinker Deepak Chopra can barely carry a single sentence to a coherent conclusion–it’s tough to imagine him running an entire blog to success all by himself. Susan Estrich learned the hard way that you can be a famous talking head, political strategist and columnist and still turn out to be terrible blogger. The Corner is a great blog, but not because of any one writer there. Jonah and Ramesh and K-Lo and the gang play off of each other to make that blog work as well as it does. Conversely, obscure people can become instant celebrities in the blogosphere. Who’d ever heard of Glenn Harlan Reynolds before InstaPundit propelled him to his Heh-driven heights? Andrew Sullivan was famous before blogging, became a famous blogger, and is now becoming a famously failing blogger. He’s barely in the top 20 in the ecosystem these days.

The point of all of this is–congratulations, Michelle! I’ll go back to my obscurity in a day or so, but I’ll be cheering you from afar.

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