"to make some reply in defence" [SILV]
Would anyone like to give Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post a piece of their mind? In his column No Shot Sherlock, he tries his deductive abilities to no avail as he attempts to correctly identify the owner of a lost address book.
In the process, he calls Watson a " knuckleheaded, mealy-mouthed, jowly, boring" sidekick.
We all know that Watson was anything but the Boobus Britannicus that Nigel Bruce played him as. He was a Doctor of Medicine, for goodness sake! But while he was intelligent in his own right, when compared with Sherlock Holmes, he naturally fades a bit - and his own humility plays it down as well. It doesn't help when Holmes tells him, "you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light." [HOUN]
If any mere mortal pairs himself up with Sherlock Holmes, there's bound to be an element of perceived stupidity about the individual. But that doesn't mean that one is a knucklehead. And when one has seen war service and experienced women "over three separate continents," we struggle to think how a journalist could possibly call him "boring."
Yes, Gene Weingarten doens't understand Dr. Watson. And he needs some enlightened Sherlockians to conduct some light in his general direction.
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