Ann Althouse, I am in Love with Blogging, Legal Times, Week of July 7, 2009, Vol. XXX, No. 28
Abstract
Hello. Maybe you've noticed me. I've been writing for 1262 days straight on a blog called Althouse. I've been writing law review articles for much longer than that. I'm a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and have been since 1984. But that sort of laboring over footnotes and transitions, with multiple edits and years between conception and publishing, is not, I think, where I've found my readers. These days, I amuse or enrage about 12,000 readers a day, writing about whatever catches my attention'much of it lawrelated, some of it rather frivolous . . . even when it's law-related. You may remember the Plaidgate controversy of July 2005. I took the position that The New York Times' biography of Judge' now Chief Justice'John Roberts Jr. included a photo spread designed to plant the notion that the man was gay: 'Just look at the series of photographs they chose: young John in plaid pants, young John with his boys' school pals, young John in a wrestling suit with his fellow wrestlers, John with footballers, and'the final pic'John smiling in an all-male wedding photograph.' I riff on miscellaneous articles about science and sex and art. I write at least something about every episode of 'American Idol.' I talk about politics. My perception of Freudian meaning in the carrot sticks and onion rings at the center of Hillary Clinton's new video set off a tirade of abuse against me in late June. And some people are still steamed about the long post, called 'How Kerry lost me,' that I put up a few weeks before the 2004 election.
