Past Exonerative Tense

I thought some pundit like William Safire had come up with the idea of the “exculpatory passive”, but when I’ve gone searching for that article, all I come up with is this article by Vijith Assar in McSweeney’s. Still, this is a brilliant exploration of the genesis of the “past exonerative tense”, which is pretty much the same thing.

An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar.