Right Wing Nut House

Congratulations to all my friends, colleagues and nemeses at The American Thinker which turns 6 years old today.

I have been associated with AT for almost 5 years, having written my first piece for them back in February of 2005 I consider it one of the finest conservative sites on the web, with many first class writers contributing over the years. Many of those writers, like myself, have been nurtured and encouraged by a remarkable man.

Editor in Chief Tom Lifson was the first person to really recognize that I might be able to write a little, and with patience and good humor, guided my development over the years. A self described “recovering academic,” Tom is a classic Renaissance man whose intellect is deep and broad, encompassing a wide range of topics and issues. He has turned American Thinker into one of the most impactful sites on the web, as articles and blog posts have been quoted by every major publication here and many abroad, as well as seeing AT constantly mentioned on radio and TV shows from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck.

In 2007, I was hired on as Associate Editor, writing 6 or 7 blog posts a day as well as contributing articles. At about the time I was brought aboard, AT began to increase its readership dramatically - especially after Rush Limbaugh began to regularly quote from the site. Readership seemed to peak during the 2008 election and then fell of - but only temporarily.

Tom describes what happened next:

Following the 2008 election, as expected, readership dropped a bit from the incredible peaks it had experienced, though it was still substantially larger than it was as late as August. But as soon as Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office, with AT supplying ongoing political analysis, our growth resumed, surpassing even the election peak on a sustained basis. Year 2009 readership once again virtually doubled from the previous year, despite the huge run-up during the 2008 election. In 2009, AT was visited 34 million times, with over 103 million page views. The analytical software tells us that 10.7 million unique visitors came onto AT that year, but I suspect that many people are double-counted. Nevertheless, just under 1.5 million unique visitors have come to AT each of the last few months, and it is safe to say that millions of Americans read AT last year.

Now to relate something incredible; Lifson ran the site virtually on his own for all those years. He hired me in 2007 to post a few blogs every day and Submissions Editor Larrey Anderson in 2008 to help him wade through the dozens of unsolicited articles the site receives. But until quite recently, Lifson was spending up to 70 hours a week reviewing and editing submissions, answering the hundreds of emails that come in daily, posting blogs, and writing his own columns. The volume of work this entailed is truly astonishing when you think about it.

Then, in November, he finally gave in and vastly increased Larrey’s and my responsibilities. I was made Blog Editor and am now mostly responsible for posting the 14-16 blogs a day that appear on the site as well as plowing through the hundreds of emails we receive every day.

And the site just continues to grow.

I am proud to have been a part of American Thinker all these years and consider my work there rewarding and important. I wish I had time to write articles for the site but with the increased responsibilities over the years, I just haven’t had the time. That may change soon.

One last note; my views on many issues do not line up well with Tom’s or many of AT’s readers. But Lifson has never turned down a column or ever scrubbed a blog post where I have expressed positions at odds with the majority. It is this openness, fair mindedness, and dedication to presenting alternative views that I have treasured above all else about American Thinker.

A truly remarkable and valuable resource for conservatives.