Disregard the beautiful
Iavoid columns written by attractive people and for the same reason prefer to employ a dishevelled lawyer rather than someone who looks like they stepped from the cast of Suits.
Lawyers cost money – bad ones especially – but reading a column isn’t free, either. Even a short diatribe like this burns a few minutes of your finite allocation of time.
Given this constraint and the inability to know if a columnist is any good before reading them you should just skip the attractive writers.
We prefer to read things written by pretty people. It’s why most of our high-profile commentators are delightfully photogenic, despite having the literacy skills of a hamster.
It helps if they have some other talent for publicity, like singing, crashing expensive cars or a gig on the radio. Sadly, this does not guarantee talent in front of the typewriter, even if it helps with readership.
This may not matter if they don’t actually do the writing. Sean Plunket alleged at a media event that one of New Zealand’s more prominent writers had the wisdom to employ a PR firm to write her copy. There was some umbrage from the beautiful set but it struck me as a neat solution to the conundrum that those who can get writing jobs are not always those who can write.
A good-looking but illiterate dilettante with nothing to say will periodically get a column, whilst the aesthetically-challenged will only get one if they can demonstrate some literary flair.
Not every good-looking scribe is unintelligible of course, and the truly awful will get weeded out. Longevity can then be used as a metric to decide if a beautiful author is worth spending your time on.
The same is true for many professions. A dishevelled, socially awkward lawyer who struggles with personal hygiene isn’t going to win the confidence of many clients. If, nonetheless, they maintain a successful practice you can be sure that this was earned solely on merit.
Adversity works as a filter, allowing only the gifted through. It is why I prefer graduates who have been through the mill of immigration and English as a second language to those who have glided from Epsom to Kings and Otago.
This, of course, is monstrously self-serving as a quick inspection of my profile picture will confirm, but half a century has taught me a few things and this is one of them. Alas: it has also taught me that 400 words by Posh Beckham on her preferred brand of cat litter would garner far more readers.