This is the most civil version of a common complaint:
Jonah, regarding your post of earlier today – Private Beauchamp said, “That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.” I think if you parse that sentence with more care you will see that the antecedent of the plural “those” is “experiences” and not “character.” The point being that writing under an assumed name led to Beauchamp’s character, and his reporting of his own and his comrades’ experiences, being called into question. Beachamp does not suggest anything about his comrades’ character — but your desire to score rhetorical points blinded you to the obvious meaning of the sentence. At this point, I can only suggest that further hysterical and ill-considered denunciations of Private Beauchamp serve only to make you, and others for whom criticism of the war by our own troops creates a painful cognitive dissonance, look silly.
Update: From another reader:
Jonah,
Whatever else Private Low-Class Beauchamp is, he’s certainly no writer. The sentence at issue,
“That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.”
is simply neither very good nor very grammatical.
The faulty parallel construction admits of both interpretations: yours and those of your critics. I suspect that you are right, and PLC Beauchamp was trying to assert that his critics are besmirching the character of his comrades. You and Mark Steyn should stick to your guns: PLC Beauchamp’s character is the one being besmirched and by his own words. He has no cause for complaint.
Best regards from a (former) copyeditor,






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