CNN fan fave Fareed Zakaria wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post Thursday where he actually got something right, pointing out that in these times, it would be more beneficial for politicians to solve the huge problems facing our country than to spend all their time obsessing over what pronouns a person might prefer.

Zakaria hosts CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” writes a foreign affairs column for The Post, and is also a contributing editor for the Atlantic. He’s got all his liberal credentials lined up in a neat row, but even he can’t escape the insatiable appetite of the outrage mob.

He predictably faced an immediate backlash over the story for daring to step away from liberal orthodoxy, with outrage pouring in from such important voices as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten and triggered New York Times writer Elizabeth Spiers.

Zakaria’s offending headline? “Forget Pronouns: Democrats need to become the party of building things.”  Forget pronouns?! What are you, nuts? What could possibly be more important than pronouns?

Democrats need to once more become the party that gets stuff done, builds things and makes government work for people. That’s a lot more important to most Americans than using the right pronouns.

My latest column: https://t.co/x8ULfqjdfQ

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) July 14, 2022

That headline has already been updated on the WaPo website to delete the offending phrase, now simply reading, “Democrats need to become the party of building things.” Gone is the outrageous phrase, “Forget the pronouns.” Thank goodness.

Why would the Washington Post change its headline so quickly? After all, it wasn’t even a story by WaPo writer Taylor Lorenz, whose writings regularly need updates, corrections, and clarifications. No, they didn’t change the headline because there was an error; they changed it because of the severe criticism and whining of the left. Here’s Chasten Buttigieg, hubby of Pete:

Addressing someone by the name/pronoun they prefer is free, easy, and kind. Using them builds community and belonging. Democrats can walk and chew gum. We can fix roads and build bridges while also making it a little easier to go about your life. That’s called freedom.

— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chasten) July 15, 2022

The New York Times wouldn’t pass up the chance to punch at its competitor, so writer Elizabeth Spiers quickly piled on. Referencing a poll that Fareed mentioned in his piece, she tweeted:

This is a wild misreading of that Times poll to begin with, but if you conflate civil rights with pronoun etiquette and are completely unaware that you’re parroting a transphobic GOP talking point, maybe step back from the keyboard.

Ooh, “better step away from the keyboard”! Them’s fighting words.

A liberal podcaster named Kimberley Johnson was overwrought too, tweeting: “Who is running on pronouns, @FareedZakaria? No candidate is making pronouns part of their platform. It is a social issue that most Democrats embrace… This is lazy journalism and it’s transphobic. You’re singling out one group and it’s gross.”

There’s more emotional devastation out there, but you get the idea. The problem with it all is that the Professional Aggrieved Class misses the most important point: Fareed is actually 100 percent right in his op-ed. We should be more focused on fixing a broken country than obsessing over polarizing social issues. He writes:

Analyzing some of the findings of the poll, David Leonhardt wrote, “Many Democrats — both politicians and voters, especially on the party’s left flank … seem more focused on divisive cultural issues than on most Americans’ everyday concerns, like inflation…”

There is plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party has moved left, that it is out of sync with Americans on many of these cultural issues, and that it needs to correct course.