I love Boston Legal <\/i>in all its forms. I think it\u2019s wonderful that so many major actors have taken part in it; I imagine they like the chemistry of working with such a wonderful concept, and I like to think that they believe in the message of the show, which is often delivered by Alan Shore. In last night\u2019s episode, we certainly heard a serious message about the need for civil protest in the face of the present US Administration\u2019s insistence that if you are not with the President in his war on terror, you are against him and a traitor. Necessary as such a statement is in a democracy, it is still a pretty brave thing to say, particularly when you were going for ratings. So, I\u2019d love the guts of the show, I love the wit of the show, I delight in watching Spader, Shatner, Bergen, Auberjonois, White, Fox, and Selleck trade shots.<\/p>\n
But . . .<\/p>\n
Although I admire \u2014 \u201cadore\u201d is too strong a word, but it is closer to the way I feel than \u201cadmire\u201d \u2014 David E. Kelley\u2019s wit and creativity, it distresses me that he has fallen into the melting pot of the populist carelessness regarding the gender of pronouns.<\/p>\n
Let me explain: as a result of the impact of last night\u2019s episode, \u2014 in which Alan Shore argues passionately for the civil rights of his pretty client, who had written \u201cstick it\u201d on a Post-it note and shoved it into her income tax return without payment because she was so pissed off with the government\u2019s record on the war on terrorism, torture, invasion of privacy, etc. \u2014 as a result of that, I decided to write a blog article on it; wishing to check characters\u2019 names, I Googled Boston Legal<\/i> and discovered that the web site<\/a> is just as inventive and hilarious as the program.<\/p>\n Here is where the \u201cbut\u201d comes in. The motto for Crane Poole and Schmidt is \u201cEveryone deserves their day in court.\u201d Here comes the technical part: obviously, the singular verb \u201cdeserves\u201d acknowledges that \u201ceveryone\u201d is a singular subject, and requires a singular pronoun referent. Before pronoun gender became an issue of political correctness, the motto would have read \u201cEveryone deserves his day in court.\u201d Personally, I think that degendering the personal pronoun \u201chis\u201d is by far preferable to the muddy plurals in use today; however, I know I\u2019m bucking the trend on that one.<\/p>\n Here is my proposal: \u201cEveryone deserves a day in court\u201d or \u201cYou deserve your day in court\u201d. Don\u2019t get me started about Shirley Schmidt\u2019s web site motto: \u201cA smart attorney realizes who they can or cannot rattle\u201d, which opens up another can of worms (pronoun case) that I shall not ingest today, as well as the above blah blah blah. I will comment, however, that certain characters seem to exhibit the plural pronoun fault more than others. At first I thought it was actors improvising lines; but the web site suggests that this is either David E. Kelley\u2019s idiosyncrasy or management\u2019s.<\/p>\n My point: because reading is not so large an influence as it used to be or would be in an ideal world, writers and broadcasters, who are <\/i>significant influences in setting linguistic patterns, have the obligation to at least maintain standards of English which are logical. A clever writer such as David E. Kelley can certainly find unstilted ways around this politically correct pronoun muddiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love Boston Legal in all its forms. I think it\u2019s wonderful that so many major actors have taken part in it; I imagine they like the chemistry of working with such a wonderful concept, and I like to think … Continue reading