Several readers have e-mailed to grumble about me not being included in the

“Best of NRO 2002″ thingy. What does this mean? they want to know. Answer:

It means that I was away from my desk for a few hours while Kathy Lopez was

desperately trying to round up choices from NRO’s numerous contributorsm,

most of whom at that point in the seasonal festivities were either drunk,

hung over, or out on a ski slope somewhere. This illustrates a general

phenomenon. Spoiled by the flawless, long-cogitated, multiply-edited,

thoroughly fact-checked world of print magazines like NRODT, readers

expect the same quality from a web magazine. Sorry, folks, ain’t going to

happen. It’s a different world here on the web. We all do our best, but in

the nature of things this is transient stuff. If I write something for a

print magazine, it will be hanging around in orthodontists’ waiting rooms

for months, years, afterwards. It has a permanence that justifies all the

resources print magazines put into their product. If I do something for the

web, on the other hand, it’s gone and forgotten the next day. Our web

columns are only glancingly edited, and never fact-checked. A webzine

simply can’t justify those kinds of resources. NRO, and every other

webzine I know of, is held together with wire and string, like a WW1

biplane. (In this analogy, NRODT would be an F-16.) A tiny number of

horribly overworked people keep the thing in the air. In a perfect world,

K-Lo would have put out her APB for “Best of 2002″ three weeks ago, giving

us all time to sift through our stuff and offer up mature reflections.

K-Lo, however, has 1,001 other things to attend to, so that we, and you,

have to take our chances. Got that? And which of my 2002 pieces am I most

pleased with? That’s another one of those question that I might give a

different answer to on a different day. Strictly as what in the trade we

call “a think piece,” I like “Minoritarianism.” I

am also fond of my EFTA piece, I am not sure

why. For a combination of actual reporting (I do call myself a journalist,

after all) with measured indignation and respect for a good man departed, I

think I am most pleased with 2002’s very first column.