"All the time I hear people lampoon others by opening with a caveat like “So and So’s a good guy,” followed by “It’s just that he….” Commence butchering.
. . .
"This kind of caveat doubles as both a way to talk about someone without feeling like you’re gossiping, and as a handy way to excuse someone’s incompetence, ignorance, or negligence.
"On one side is fraud, pretending to respect a person so that you will not look so bad when you trash him or her. On the other is rationalization, performed to justify behavior you don’t want to confront in others–or in yourself.
. . . “So and So is a good guy, but he is completely out of touch with students or what it was like to grade papers 25 hours a day.” At my next school, teachers used the other edge of the sword. All you have to do is invert the sentence structure. “He is completely incompetent, lacks all passion, and is incapable of relating to the people who work for him on anything resembling a human level. But he’s a good guy with a good heart.”
"Maybe he has a great heart. Or maybe it’s rotten. Caveats and excuses reveal more about those who use them than about anyone else. This is especially true of parents. Most people who have ever worked a job they hated or had a friendship go south have used these. But there is one category of people whose experience extends to expertise: dads." . . .
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