The formerly smashingly cute Mr. MATTHEW BUTTERICK, on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: “Hated it. A rancid reactionary fantasia of pre–Baby Boomer American masculinity.” (He misrendered that adjective chain.)
Few now recall how, as a young/hung/full-of-cum designer, Mr. BUTTERICK slaved away in Roger Black’s hothouse. The consternatingly dapper and accomplished Mr. BLACK is of course one of the few homosexualist graphic designers, said profession being as hetero as roofing but with less of a raison d’être. Like John Du Pont, about whom I wrote a “Talk of the Town” piece for the New Yorker that Brendan Lemon couldn’t quite manage to run, Mr. BLACK operated a flat-out harem in the 1990s, with a staff made up of cute young things like Mr. BUTTERICK – and the dyspeptic Michael Goff, whose looks have fallen off a cliff but whose editing skills were always in the gulley alongside the flattened corpse of Wile E. Coyote, whom he indeed now resembles.
Given the history, Mr. BUTTERICK’s post-teenage-girl American self-hatred disqualifies him from passing judgement on men. The name “Butterick” is a masculinity disqualifier on its face. Remind us again how important it is, in the Drumpf era, to centre Black trans wymmynz’ lives in American discourse, and how some men have vaginas.
Why do I bother promoting his book Typography for Lawyers, which I did as recently as a fortnight ago?