People sometimes ask me why I didn’t write about something. This happens more often than I would expect, be it in comments, in person, or by email. But not being a professional pundit, and indeed having long given up promoting the blog, I feel no obligation to weigh in on everything.
So here are the top ten reasons I didn’t write about that thing you asked about, more or less in order of frequency:
- I had nothing original to say that wasn’t being said on lots of other blogs.
- You’ve got the [law/economics] backwards in your comment, but it’s clear that no amount of facts or explaining will get through to you.
- Even I can tell that I don’t know enough about it, and I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to find out what I’d need to know to write about it sensibly.
- Drafted something, but didn’t like the way it sounded.
- I don’t agree with [law schools’/U.Miami’s] critics, but anything I write is too likely to be dismissed as partisan pleading for my [profession/employer].
- I had deadlines for real work.
- I’m writing about that topic for a law review, and it’s too hard to compress an article into a blog post; I’ll link to the article when it’s done.
- It would make UM look bad without sufficient justification (most often applicable when I have nothing original to say).
- I was out of town while it happened.
- Beats me.
