Singular "They"?

As many of my close friends are (to put it politely) grammar Nazis, I took great interest in this article advocating "they" as the third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun. "They" would take the place of "he," an obviously not gender-neutral pronoun.

Yup, I can see your eyes glaze over from here.

Needless to say, the use of the singular "they" defies all modern grammatical rules, though the breachers do have a distinguished tradition on their side. (I had no idea that such literary luminaries as Shakespeare, Dryden, and George Eliot were fond of flouting noun-pronoun agreement. Not to mention the writers for the Ricki Lake show.) I disagree with the assertion that grammar exists to promote the upper classes at the expense of the lower - anyone can learn the rules and choose to follow them. However, having searched for any satisfactory replacement for "he" as a generic pronoun, it would please me to discover that the answer was under my nose the whole time. Let's see what shows up in the new edition of Strunk & White.

(What? I was an English major - old habits die hard.)