The pronouns that contributed to Claudine Gay's downfall
Plus: Presale tickets now available for The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical.
It’s a big week: We announced dates, casting and presale tickets for The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical! Rehearsals are underway, and these word nerds are talented. The show runs March 8-16, with a preview performance on March 7, and a few matinees sprinkled in there.
Get your presale tickets before they go to sale to the general public here.
You can also support the production’s crowdfunding campaign and access unique perks. We were fortunate to hit our preliminary goal after just a few days, so we now have a stretch goal of $5,000 that will help us rent better sound equipment, hire more backstage hands, print more marketing materials, and buy extra punctuation.
For when you need it.
On to this week’s column.
Former Harvard president Claudine Gay wasn’t ousted because of racism.
It wasn’t antisemitism or plagiarism, either.
The culprit? Pronouns.
After Gay gave laughably bad congressional testimony last month, it looked for a minute like she wouldn’t face any repercussions. But anyone following conservative media saw that opposition to Gay was only heating up.
Grammatical hysteria was just the thing to inflame the base.
“Elite University Scrubs Multiple Web Pages About ‘Identity Recognitions,’ Pronouns,” screamed the headline on Dec. 18 in the ultraconservative Daily Caller, whose story then reverberated in the right-wing echo chamber of the Tennessee Star, the Ohio Star, the Virginia Star, the Florida Capital Star, the Michigan Star, and possibly some other, more originally named publications. (Possibly not.)
The story was written by a “Brandon Poulter,” who is possibly the not-originally-named alter ego of a cosplaying Ann Coulter. (Possibly not.)
Read the full column at Inquirer.com.