This was the gist of it.
[C]opy editors need to be tied to a post and have over-ripe fruit thrown at them the first time they veer from the straight and narrow by degrading the stuff they're there to improve; the procedure to be repeated periodically until they've thoroughly absorbed the lesson.I took Norm’s post to be a playful rant, but it contains more than a grain of truth: any writer who hasn’t, at least once, felt like venting their rage at a copy editor, probably doesn’t put too much into their writing.
I found the piece amusing (I thought this was pretty funny as well) but from the sounds of it, some people took Norm’s words far too seriously.
Personally, for the same reasons Susanna mentions, I‘m strongly in favor of copy editors. I just didn’t realize some of them could be so sensitive.
