On AP's semantics gaffe: Can we still say "The French"?

Plus, my thoughts on being a "not-really-French" citizen

Photo by Dorian Hurst on Unsplash

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Moving on to this week’s topic, I nearly laughed aloud while, mid-workout at the gym last week, I read that the Associated Press was mired in an embarrassing tweet-retraction “scandal”, after they announced they had updated their style guide with respect to talking about different nationalities.

In our absurd age of unmitigated rage-tweeting, there was, on one hand, predictable “anti-woke” outrage in response to the AP’s announcement. (Cue collective yawns. Most of us have much better things to do— you know, getting on with the business of life, and all).

Some, like the NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof, responded with more thoughtful, measured analysis of it all (though he appears to have since retracted his own tweet):