While this is all terribly flattering, and I’m pretty confident that the reader who wants “Conservative Elementary School Art Teacher with Three Dogs Guy” won’t have a lot of competition, I should let you know how others have achieved “guy status.” My Middle East guy has been sending me interesting emails on his area of expertise for more than a year. They’re concise, informative and authoritative. Military guy has been convincing me he’s the real deal for quite a while as well. In short, you achieve guy status by worming your way into my confidences. Now, this doesn’t mean that all of the people who want to be Star Trek guy should send me long essays and insights into all things Trek. Another important attribute of “guy” status is being timely. Law guys email me when law stuff happens that they think is particularly important and that nobody else has noticed. All the guys tend to be funny, don’t take themselves too seriously and understand that not every email they send me can warrant the kind of thoughtful response they deserve. They offer sometimes brilliant criticisms of my columns, without being jerks about it. In fact, I tend to find that the more of a jerk a reader is, the less impressive his criticism is. Hmmm.
Anyway, when I think about it, this describes hundreds of you people. In fact, you’re all my guys. Now get back to the hard work of being “read NRO too much at work guys.”