Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Behind The Scene
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Jon Carroll, the columnist whose work I follow most closely, warns me of an occupational hazard.
Here's a dilemma: You have to be fairly self-absorbed to write a newspaper column in the first place, so the job self-selects for narcissists. But in order to do the job well, you have to be more self-involved than maybe even you want to be, so it reinforces your worst character traits and pays you for them.
For this Thursday's MC Masala, I could have made nuanced commentary on the BJP and fundamentalism, or deception, or the subjectivity of the good. But it will be a silly anecdote instead.
