just goes to show how intrinsically insiduous the word is. this guy
gets his fucking ass wooped at the end of the article by the widow...

Manny Farber, A Critical Eye For Termite Art

by John Powers

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Fresh Air from WHYY, August 22, 2008 · It's always been easy to make
fun of critics, even critics at large. Mark Twain described us as
eunuchs in the harem, saying, "They know how it's done, and see it
done every day, but they can't do it themselves." Maybe so, but nobody
would ever have made such a joke about Manny Farber. Even as his real
job was being a gifted painter — a poster of one of his still lifes
hangs on my wall — Farber moonlighted as a film critic from the 1940s
until the early 1970s.

Now, it's possible that you've never heard of Manny Farber, but in a
sense you already know him, for he was one of those critics who open
other critics' eyes — he was admired by everyone from Pauline Kael to
Susan Sontag. The one collection of his criticism, called Negative
Space, is on every critic's bookshelf, and it's amazing how often it's
been quoted, borrowed from, strip-mined or used as a launching pad.