In an earlier post, I called Andrew McClintock — who believed he should not have to obey the Law of the Land because his imaginary friend says so — a homophobic dickhead.
It has been pointed out to me that this choice of wording might tend to diminish McClintock’s standing in the eyes of someone who considers being a dickhead to be somehow less acceptable than being homophobic. (I personally would have expected that believing such things would cause most people’s heads to undergo what mobile phone manufacturers’ lawyers refer to euphemistically as spontaneous rapid disassembly.)
I also realise that there is a world of difference between being a dickhead and merely acting like a dickhead. After all, actors in soap operas who portray characters who perform distasteful acts regularly receive hate mail and death threats from members of the public who conflate television drama with reality, and the imaginary character Deirdre Rachid received more letters of support from a concerned public than any real-life political prisoner. I should not stoop to the level of these people.
Anyway, to return to the subject at hand. Andrew McClintock is not a homophobic dickhead. He is merely a homophobe who sometimes behaves like a dickhead. OK now?