I Hope This Column Ages Poorly

There are few epithets more smugly dismissive than the declaration that something — a novel, a TV show, a political movement, a prediction, an opinion — did not “age well.”

The criticism is a double condemnation; just being factually wrong is not enough. The thing in question, when held up to some contemporary standard, however construed, must not only be wrong — it must be so egregiously wrong as to constitute an embarrassment, even an ethical lapse. Implicit in the censure is the critic’s amazement that it was ever considered correct or acceptable at all.

Not all errors, however famous, merit this critique. When,........

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