George Packer is an accomplished journalist and author. So it strikes me as exceedingly strange and bordering on disingenuous that he conflates journalism, long-form non-fiction, fiction and the types of writing and communications covered by non-profit style guides (i.e., white papers and the like). The idea that style guides seeking to promote respectful language will somehow chill the free expression or quality of all these different genres is close to incomprehensible.