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John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
@jholbo1
Oct 28, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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As one does, I was studying conventions for quotation mark placement around titles in old WPA-era posters ... You see the issue. Obviously the right answer would be to NOT include them on the grounds that the title IS the title. Duh. But that is regarded as unworkable. Hence: 1/ ImageImageImageImage
There is strong, evolutionary pressure on quotation marks to evolve into superior umlauts, or devolve into vestigial ligatures, to avoid wasting space. But, pondering this truth, I got distracted. 2/
Take the case of "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse", by Barré Lyndon. Did it occur to no one that the title is a bit ... well ... But, no. Everyone was too busy wrangling quotation marks to know about sex. (Here we see further tactics for growth, diminution, placement.) 3/ ImageImage
Wikipedia says: Yep, they just missed it clean. 4/ Image
To be a fly on the wall:

"Has anyone noticed we made them write 'Clitoris' on the posters?"

"Nope. And the play's a hit! we're going on Broadway!"

"Great! Who's Clitterhouse?" 5/
"Hardwicke. Cedric Hardwicke." 6/ Image
I think 'Clitterhouse' - a doctor whose fascination with crime makes him crime: like a male version of the female clitoris - may be the inspiration for The Crime Doctor, first appearing in "Detective Comics" #77. You're welcome. 7/ Image

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More from @jholbo1

John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 1
This @radleybalko debunking of the 'Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted' documentary, "The Fall of Minneapolis", seems quite thorough, convincing, and damning. radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconni…
It's SO thorough & damning it's fair to say that figures like @coldxman who have promoted the documentary, & its conclusion, should either 1) debunk Balko's debunking back or 2) admit they were suckered by liars or 3) be themselves regarded as such. thefp.com/p/what-really-…
Back in December I somehow found myself listening to this bloggingheads discussion between @GlennLoury and John McWhorter, in which Loury quite strongly takes the line that the documentary exonerates Chauvin and proves 'we've been lied to'. bloggingheads.tv/videos/67137
Read 19 tweets
John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Oct 31, 2023
11 things can be true at once.
1) Israeli policy towards Palestinians has been & continues to be deeply unjust.
2) Belief in 1) is not antisemitic.
3) Since 1) is a main root of the conflict 'solutions' that ignore it won't work & are bad.
4) The left has an antisemitism problem.
5) The left has an idiot problem. Lots of people shouting antisemitic slogans they don't understand out of a vague sense that this is social justice.
6) 4) + 5) is really bad and poisonous to the left.
7) The right has an antisemitism problem (and an idiot problem, duh.)
8) The pro-Israel right has an interest in playing up 4) because it is unwilling to admit 1), despite 3), and would like to believe 7) is less serious than 4), which - maybe? (Who can say, but I doubt it.)
9) 8) predictably exacerbates 4) + 5), hence 6).
Read 5 tweets
John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Oct 9, 2023
My personal resolution: I'm only going to comment on the Israel/Gaza situation in a calm manner, addressed to the relatively small slice of people I think might be persuaded to see things a bit differently.
Here is @monacharen. Obviously there is a sense in which Israel did nothing to 'provoke' this attack. Nothing could justify or excuse it. But Israel did a great deal to risk it - to recklessly tempt such a development, politically, strategically. plus.thebulwark.com/p/hamas-makes-…
Image
One can say so without thereby excusing or justifying the attack. Every Israeli is demanding to know who is at fault on the Israeli side for staggering intelligence and defense lapses. No one is saying no one is at fault because, morally, it was the job of Hamas not to attack.
Read 9 tweets
John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Aug 18, 2023
[Deep breath] It's worse. It's so, so bad - so much worse even than that - that it's hard to keep the big picture in view. But let's try. Trump was denouncing vote-by-mail as "dangerous" and "fraudulent" as early as April, 2020. https://t.co/04CKW1Kl7inpr.org/sections/coron…
In fact, he made similar claims way back to 2016. All totally baseless. But let's just go back to April, 2020. As many have noted, as many R's have regretted, this was shooting himself in the foot. His voters believed him. He depressed his own turnout.
Why would Trump do that? He deliberately lowered his chances to win honestly because he calculated that doing so increased his chances to cheat - to steal the election by falsely alleging the election was stolen by D's.
Read 22 tweets
John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Aug 13, 2023
Moyn's lectures were great! Haven't read the book yet but the review, which is great, emphasises his key idea: the characteristic pessimism of Cold War-era philosophical liberalism - Trilling, Popper, Himmelfarb, Berlin, Shklar. Let me rub together 2 thoughts via that.
Rothfeld, the reviewer, contrasts these figures, as Moyn portrays them, with an identikit liberal. "A chipper rationalist who is scornfully secular, naively sanguine about humanity’s prospects for self-improvement and devoted to the philosophy of the Enlightenment."
This is just SO wrong. Cold War philosophical liberalism, as Moyn emphasises, is dark, pessimistic, concessive not aspirational, pre-emptively crouched. Per Moyn, it is 'against itself'. As a result - to this day - most anti-liberal critiques of liberalism are not EVEN wrong.
Read 23 tweets
John Holbo jholbo.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 12, 2023
The pull quote is exactly right for this one from @jbouie. One way to think about it: suppose, for the sake of the argument, there ARE two problems at present. 1) teens confusedly over-identifying as trans due to some social contagion whatever. 2) docs over-accommodating this. 1/
You reply: 1 & 2 aren't actually true. That's fine but just be an abstract normative political philosophy seminar room dork with me on this for a minute. It isn't absurd to imagine 1 & 2. If 1 & 2 were true, for the sake of argument, what would be the proper response? 2/
Broadly, there are two strategies. If you believe in liberty and respect and basic rights for all there is no alternative than muddling through. If the medical community has overcorrected for its long history of insufficiently recognising trans people, we need to correct the over
Read 26 tweets

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