{"id":5315,"date":"2011-01-26T09:10:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T13:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cloggie.org\/proggold\/2011\/01\/26\/empty-gestures\/"},"modified":"2011-01-26T09:11:53","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T13:11:53","slug":"empty-gestures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/2011\/01\/26\/empty-gestures\/","title":{"rendered":"Empty gestures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nPotlach dissects the politics of <a href=\"http:\/\/potlatch.typepad.com\/weblog\/2011\/01\/the-politics-of-the-thumb.html\">New Labour hand movements<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/proggold\/ed-miliband.jpg\" wdith=\"230\" height=\"138\" alt=\"Ed Milliband and his thumbed fist\" class=\"alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe thumb-press is a straight-forward mode of manual expression, in  which the user makes a traditional fist, but then manoeuvres the thumb from its position clasped over (or under the fingers) and lays it gently on top of the index finger as a hint of  diplomacy. So easy is the thumb-press, in fact, that lay-members of  the public are welcome to use it in every day convesations &#8211; but they will experience the bizarre sensation of having morphed into a New Labour politician. Used at a dinner party, it may result in shoulders being turned and mutterings to the effect that &#8220;I prefer not to talk about politics, thankyou very much&#8221;. As Wittgenstein would have been keen to note, were one to say the words &#8220;look &#8211; the bus is coming&#8221;, while gesturing with the thumb-press, the listener would assume that one were claiming credit for having invested more money in public transport.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Potlach dissects the politics of New Labour hand movements: The thumb-press is a straight-forward mode of manual expression, in which the user makes a traditional fist, but then manoeuvres the thumb from its position clasped over (or under the fingers) and lays it gently on top of the index finger as a hint of diplomacy. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[741],"class_list":["post-5315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-labour","tag-ed-miliband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5316,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions\/5316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/proggold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}