Two Years Before the Masses

I am hard at work assembling my end-of-the year round-up of what bloggers on my blogroll believe are their best posts of 2007 (if you are on my blogroll -- or want to be -- and you haven't sent me a link to what you think is your best post this year, get to it). But I didn't want to let this milestone go by without some comment: This week this modest blog turned two, which is practically middle-aged in blog years.

I'm usually not very good at remembering anniversaries. I got in a bit of trouble one year when Mrs. Swift asked me if I remembered that today was our anniversary and I answered, "Anniversary of what?" It only occurred to me that this week was my blogiversary when Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters interviewed me for his Heading Right radio show and asked me when I started this blog, and even then I got the date wrong. Oh, did I mention I was going to be interviewed? See, I told you I was absent-minded. Anyway, if you're interested, you can listen to the show here. I make my entrance shortly after the half-hour mark.

This blog was born on December 17, 2005 with three short posts -- "War on Hanukkah," "Intelligent Design," and "Gay Mariage" -- which still remains my record for number of posts in one day. The "War on Hanukkah" piece was written when I was still Jewish, before I saw The Chronicles of Narnia and became a Born-Again Christian. I am still looking for the chapters in the Bible about the talking fauns and other magical biblical creatures. Although I received my first reader comment the next day from one Dottore Nicolo Fantutti, The Hospital of the Broken Salve, Rome, Italy, an early hint of the international impact my blog would soon have, my first big influx of readers came when Jonah Goldberg linked to my "Google Searches" piece at The Corner. I can't tell you how much it pains me that a rift has come between us since my attempt to help him write his book Liberal Fascism was so coldly rebuffed. I wonder if he thought my attempt to lend a helping hand was itself somehow fascist.

But I soon began making other friends on the Internet. Nevada Thunder, Streak's Blog, Jesus Politics and Mark Crispin Miller's News from the Underground were the first to blogroll me. Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice, Glenn Greenwald, Mike Finnigan at Crooks & Liars, Pierre Tristam at Candide's Notebook, Polimom, Kevin Hayden at American Street and the folks at Bad Attitudes were early supporters. To them I will always be grateful.

My Amazon reviews soon proved popular with many non-readers if not with Amazon itself, which set about deleting as many as it could find. Alas, my reviews were also not very well received by Thomas Woods Jr., who was a bit unhappy with my review of his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, and this commenter.

But as I once advised Oprah, even in the face of harsh criticism, a conservative never admits mistakes, though there are a few things I might have done differently. This year I was forced to delete my notorious April Fool's post to avoid a nasty lawsuit and I still haven't been able to confirm my exclusive report on the death of Michael Ledeen, though I think a lot of people are hoping that I will be able to confirm his death someday.

But what can you expect from a two-year-old? I prefer not to dwell on my occasional setbacks but to focus on the good things that happened this year. There was my battle, with my good friend skippy the bush kangaroo at my side, to encourage the big liberal blogs to make their blogrolls more truly liberal and help out underprivileged blogs instead of leaving it up to the government. There was my citation as the Best North American Blog in the Blogpower Awards, which were started by the U.K.'s greatest gift to the blogosphere, James Higham of Nourishing Obscurity. There was my very respectable showing in the Weblog Awards, which declared Jon Swift to be the third-funniest blog on the Internet. There was my first place award in the Writer's Block Contest for my piece "Who Needs Books?" There was my controversial but ultimately rewarding stint guest-hosting the Blog Round Up at Crooks & Liars (thank you, Mike, and welcome back). And there was my victory over Facebook, which was a victory for all Pseudonym-Americans.

As my blog enters its terrible twos what can you expect? More cat pictures? More one-line or even one-word posts? More YouTube videos? More Top Ten Lists? We are constantly innovating here and there is no telling what Jon Swift 2.0 will look like. I hope to continue violating every rule in Atrios' very helpful "Why Your Blog Sucks" post, which I fear will doom my chances of ever getting blogrolled or even linked to by him. And I hope we continue to have lively discussions in the comments, which I am forced to admit, are often better than the posts themselves. I do hope I have written a few good pieces but in the end a blog is only as good as its blogees. So to all my wonderful blogees I extend a warm and heartfelt thank you for making this blog what it is today and I hope we have at least another two years together.