Oh dear. I seem inadvertently to have fallen into a transatlantic cultural and linguistic divide with my line about Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host, being a �chirpy gay liberal� in my column this week.
The truth is that I did not think about it much. I wanted a quick description of Ms Maddow, since she is the newest of the television talk show hosts whom I mentioned, and the phrase seemed to sum up her brand for those living outside the US.
For many US readers, there were two problems with this.
One is the meaning of the word "chirpy". To me, and to most British people, chirpy means lively and fun. I used it because one of Ms Maddow's appealing qualities is that she is humorous and cheerful, a welcome contrast of the self-aggrandising, bombastic style of various of her male counterparts (I will not mention any names, for fear of yet more emails).
The second problem was my describing her as gay when I did not mention the sexuality of anyone else in the piece (or indeed my own). In fact, Ms Maddow is gay, and openly so, as noted in some recent articles about her, including this one in the New York Times.
I included it because I thought it said something interesting about the US culture wars (yes the ones that I strayed into) that a gay woman was now one of the most popular talk show hosts on American television.