Solteiros e Casados

Single bloggers, por Chris Dillow:

Lots of people have had fun with these remarks from Andrew Marr. But there’s something that strikes me as very odd:

A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting

It’s that use of “single” as a term of abuse.

The thing is, I’ve been single all my life and I’ve often thought that this was, if anything, an advantage in writing. This is simply because I’m single because I don’t fit in - where the hell would I find someone I had anything in common with?* - and this not fitting-inness gives me an orginalish perspective. My singleness and my post-ambition anti-managerialist Marxism are two sides of the same coin.

So, why does Marr think it a bad thing in a writer to be single? I’d suggest two hypotheses - which are perhaps related to the curious fact that Cabinet ministers are disproportionately married.

First, the job of the newspaper columnist is not to be original, but to echo the readers’ prejudices. This is much better done by someone who fits in, who is a simple, marriageable stereotype (...).

Secondly, the job of the columnist is to pitch it strong - to overlook ambiguous evidence and bounded knowledge, and to not express self-doubt. And the confidence that comes from being married - or at least from being marriagable - helps in this respect.