When the police arrived, they also advised Dershowitz to use non-gendered pronouns. Dershowitz was hesitant. “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use,” he told the police. “That’s a matter between me and my grammarian — not anything the police should have anything to say over.”
— New York Magazine 7/31/05
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All right, look. (I continue to prefer that formulation to the increasingly popular “Alright, look,” because while, unlike some of my more prescriptive colleagues, I have no quarrel with the adjectival “alright,” in the interjectory context—but I digress.) Please know that I am no longer employed by Alan Dershowitz.
Alan and I always had a somewhat tenuous business arrangement to begin with. He first approached me in the 1980s, when it was commonplace for wealthy individuals to keep full-time private grammarians on staff.
I would take my red pencil to drafts of most of his public communications, and even some personal correspondence, such as when he told his first wife to [OMITTED ON ADVICE OF COUNSEL] shortly before she [DITTO]. Cruel that letter may have been, but from a purely linguistic standpoint? Impeccable!
Yet even in the heady Nineties—the played-by-Ron-Silver days, the O.J. days—he always made sure to keep my hours under a threshold that would have triggered certain tax withholding requirements. I recall one occasion when Alan was struggling over a comma splice, which I was on the verge of resolving for him, when he looked at the clock and abruptly sent me home, muttering about the high cost of workers’ compensation insurance.
Over the years, he continued to turn to me when he needed a construction parallelized or a modifier undangled. In the wake of his association with Mr. Epstein, though, his requests took a distasteful turn. For example, a statement in which he was determined to assert that while a particular encounter at the Epstein residence had “ended happily,” it was not in fact a “happy ending” as such things are commonly defined.
It was shortly after this that I parted ways with Alan, recommending he consult one of the boutique syntax shops or even a Big Four mauve-shoe grammar firm for his needs.
Which brings us to the present kerfuffle. First of all: “Not anything the police should have anything to say over”? Alan, Alan, Alan. Perhaps you needed me more than I knew.
But as to the matter of Mr. Dershowitz’s pronoun selection, I want to emphasize that such a choice would not fall under my purview even were I still on his payroll.
How to refer to a single item sold—or, in Alan’s case, withheld from sale—by this principled vendor? I can help with that. It’s pierog, as it happens.
But deliberately misgendering the vendor? That just makes one a bloodyminded (I prefer this to the hyphenated form) prick.
I hope this clarifies matters.
