“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

The iconic phrase was never said in any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 short stories and four novels following Sherlock Holmes’ investigations.

The closest Holmes ever comes to uttering the phrase is in The Crooked Man:

“I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson,” said he. “When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom.”

“Excellent!” I cried

“Elementary,” said he.

“Elementary” is only mentioned seven other times throughout the London detective’s many exploits, though “my dear Watson” is seen in most of the stories. However, they are never muttered in the same sentence.

The misquote is believed to come from another serial from the early 1900s — Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse — that took a lot of inspiration from Holmes.

“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary,” murmured Psmith.

Or there’s a chance a stage actor uttered the phrase before the turn of the century, and it simply wasn’t documented.

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Me:

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Hey there, we are really sorry to hear that this is happening in your family. You might not be too surprised to learn that this is not uncommon and has been happening more and more it seems (at least based on how often we hear this). The bad news here is there's not like "one weird trick to snap your relative out of being a fascist dirtbag" or anything. Here's what we can suggest: Karin Tamerius has written a lot on this topic.  She recommends using five points: 1) Ask open-ended, genuinely curious, nonjudgmental questions. 2) Listen to what people you disagree with say and deepen your understanding with follow-up inquiries. 3) Reflect back their perspective by summarizing their answers and noting underlying emotions. 4) Agree before disagreeing by naming ways in which you agree with their point of view. 5) Share your perspective by telling a story about a personal experience. To practice, Tamerius has created an “angry uncle bot” that coaches you through responses to a Fox News-loving uncle’s rants over the Thanksgiving Day table. But this is also what you learn when you take any sort of training on “active listening,” so googling that term will probably yield a wealth of tips on how to do that. If you know anything about "active listening" that all might sound familiar to you. We'd recommend checking out some resources to hone your active listening skills for both this situation and future situations. We’ve actually responded to a lot of the garbage that passes in the alt-right as legitimate debating points and you’ll find many of our takedowns in our archive. But we don't think debating your relative out of fascism is likely to work, because fascism isn't exactly an appeal to rationality. Depending on how far down the dark path your relative has gone, you might want to reach out to some of the organizations dedicated to helping people leave right-wing extremism and live a decent life, like Life After Hate or the Evolve program. The SPLC has put together a web page of resources that might be helpful, too.

One thing that really makes me mad about the movies is that half of the best speeches are stolen from Eomer in the books. Théoden’s warcry of “Death!” at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was actually made by Eomer after he found out that Théoden had died and he was now in command. He was also smart and charming, but overall the Eomer of the books was emotional and very much listened to his heart over anything else.