The writer of the article does not understand it. The writer quoted by him does. The former makes a really dumb remark after the quote "Note the 'sics'. The message here is only those who are idiots could possibility think this way." That is NOT what the "sics" mean.
I should have been clearer that there are two writers here and only one is guilty.
Okeedokee. I see what you mean now.
"The writer of the article does not understand it. The writer quoted by him does. The former makes a really dumb remark after the quote "Note the 'sics'. The message here is only those who are idiots could possibility think this way." That is NOT what the "sics" mean."
You're right. This part of the article is just plain dumb because it shows either that the author is twisting passages to suit his agenda or he just doesn't understand why the "sics" were used the way they were.
The writer is quoting emails...WRITTEN words, not spoken...and using the sics to note that the spelling and punctuation errors are as written by the original writer; not typographical errors introduced by the newspaper.
That is the one and proper use of sic.
The implied message of the article writer is that only poor spellers, who also do not use proper grammer and punctuation, think in such un-PC terms.
The usage of the sics is correct, but they also are used to send the more subtle message, in that the writer could probably have used other examples that did not need any sics added for publication.