Re: Thoughts on current themes

• From: dargan_w <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 07:12:48 -0000
• Message-ID: <b8dbhg+s5um_at_...>

I remember a tossup on Behan that started "He said that 'critics are 
like eunuchs in a harem'". I buzzed there (full quote below), and 
someone from Texas went apeshit when I said I read that on the 
fortune cookie program on UA's e-mail server that morning.  Then I 
got equally pilloried on the old list-serv.  I really don't 
understand this -- a person can have precise knowledge of one thing 
about an answer out of sheer luck and that one thing might be a 
really hard clue.  It doesn't mean it's a bad question, it just 
means that person got lucky ... should they be running around saying 
how they're smarter than you because of it, of course not, but do 
the deserve the points?  Absolutely.

Dargan

the whole quote if anyone's interested is "Critics are like eunuchs 
in a harem -- they know how it's done, they see it done everyday, 
but they just can't do it themselves."  Personally I think it 
applies much better to sportswriters.

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, steinhic_at_b... wrote:
> Way back when I was an undergrad, I once got a tossup on Alcibiades
> because I'd heard a reference to him in the movie _Patton._  
Patton was
> quoting him on strategy re Sicily, which the tossup discussed.  I'd
> never heard of Alcibiades otherwise at that time.  (And no, the 
tossup
> didn't mention the movie.)  So should I give those 10 points back?
> 
> acf_cabbala wrote:
> 
> >  "If you know a clue about a Pulitzer Prize winning novel 
because of
> > its reference on Friends, it's not any less legit than if you 
read
> > seven critical essays about the work."
> >
> > Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
> >