wrong priorities

Am at university and waiting to leave for my German Circle lesson. I just went to a lecture with the first years, a lecture I'm not registered for but that I've been advised to attend cos it's important. And I've discovered another thing that REALLY irks me. People who have a stuffy obsession with the correct pronunciation. Ok, so this lecturer, who is rather new to the university, is delivering a really good lecture about the significance of Shakespeare. He makes a mistake in pronunciation, and the people behind me are laughing their heads off, riding on their ridiculous high horse, just because they caught him out in a mistake. Now, I'm not one to be a lecturer's pet and look up in awe at lecturers just because they're lecturers, but one has to give credit where it is due. This lecturer knows what he's talking about, and is articulating it most eloquently. Yes, ok, he is a lecturer of English. BUT he is Maltese, and like most Maltese, got most of his English through silent reading. So what if his accent is not exactly like the queen's? So what if he says 'rhetoric' not quite right? At least, he's insightful and intelligent, not like the silly people whose most important goal in life is to get the pronunciation right. No writer or artist has touched and moved entire generations of thinkers through his right pronunciation. Joseph Conrad, the Polish born author, had a notoriously bad pronunciation. Yet, he is one of the leading novelists of the twentieth century. You might argue, "but he's Polish". And we're Maltese. Aaaargh. Silly frivolous people. In 1984, George Orwell talks about "the neat handwriting of the illiterate". I think I know what he was talking about. I'd say "the correct pronunciation of the irrevocably dumb". Get. over. it.