Mostly I don’t get upset about other people’s grammar and usage. I believe, as a matter of principle and practice, that it’s bad to get upset about other people’s language choices. People who correct other people’s language are invariably rude, are almost always transparently insecure, and are very, very often wrong.
Nevertheless—or maybe because of this—I was mad when I read a particular sentence on Esquire’s website this week. My getting mad is in no way a judgment on the writer, who had produced an adroit and thoughtful essay on the problem of truly loving a work of art while sincerely objecting to its cultural politics. The work in question is Christopher Guest’s comedy Waiting for Guffman, which the writer has enjoyed for years but which he also now can’t help reading as an artifact of a time when homophobia was deeply ingrained in popular humor.
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