In this age of political correctness, using appropriate language can be challenging, even for those with the best PC intentions. So it was last week at the New York Times, which
clarified an earlier article (h/t
Regret the Error) :
An appraisal on Dec. 31 about David Levine, the caricaturist for The New York Review of Books who died on Dec. 29, may have left the incorrect impression that the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, the subject of one of Mr. Levine’s drawings, was homosexual. The description of Pushkin as “a gay man” was a reference to his demeanor, not his sexual orientation.
No doubt some nitpickers will think the correction should have ended: Not that there would have been anything wrong if he
were a homosexual.
