George Packer is an accomplished journalist and author. So it strikes me as exceedingly strange and bordering on disingenuous that he conflates journalism, long-form non-fiction, fiction and the types of writing and communications covered by non-profit style guides (i.e., white papers and the like). The idea that style guides seeking to promote respectful language will somehow chill the free expression or quality of all these different genres is close to incomprehensible.

Yo nice comment

Gerrymandering is the act of drawing political boundaries that benefit one party by creating districts that are biased toward that party.

For example, say Democrats are 55% of a state. It's possible to draw districts so that only 25% of the districts are majority Democrat. So you'd end up with a state where 75% of elected representatives are Republican, but only 45% of the actual population is Republican.