Word: abjection
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...graceless Soviet nudging provided a stark example of the workings of "Finlandization," the pejorative term for Finland's deferential relationship with the colossus next door. Kekkonen, who energetically supported the policy, called it "active neutrality." But to many Westerners, it has come to signify abject neutrality-or what happens to a lightly armed, nonaligned country in close proximity to the Soviet Union. According to some worst-case scenarios, all of Western Europe would be prone to Finlandization if it unilaterally scrapped the protection of its own and U.S. nuclear arms...
...House of Stewardesses, in which the actors attempted to achieve the illusion of objects flying from the screen by swaying like pendulums. This was followed by Whispers of the Wolf ("Boy, sounds really scary, eh, kids!" howled the Count), which turned out to be an essay in abject despair by Ingmar Bergman, complete with a dwarf, camera compositions like geometry proofs and racked dialogue like "Life makes me vomit" - all of it rendered in subtitles that were almost obscured by dirt in the corner of the projector...
...century whorehouse décor of red plush and smoked mirrors. Elvis subsisted on a diet of charred bacon, mashed potatoes and very sophisticated opiates and uppers. His affairs in shambles, he fired most of his faithful retinue in a paranoid frenzy of firearms and pills. An abject drug addict, he flew to Washington for a spur-of-the-moment meeting with Richard Nixon in connection with his role as a spokesman for the President's antidrug campaign. Said Nixon: "You dress pretty wild, don't you?" Replied the sedated Elvis: "Mr. President, you got your show...
Mansfield then set up a comparison case, that of "a young man, born in abject poverty of academic parents. He attended North High School in Columbus, Ohio. After that there was nothing for him, but to go to Dartmouth, and, as a crowning disappointment, to get his Ph.D. from Yale. From this pinnacle of educational disadvantage, he went to the job market, and he paid. He paid the compensation that the woman had collected, because he was not considered as an individual with his merits either, but as a representative of a class or a group. The person who collected...
Reading these books can be an exercise in abject fascination: matters of morality are disturbingly outflanked by questions of sanity. Hollywood has attempted this effect with Defense Department-size budgets, celebrity brass and vast pretensions. The results have been a parody of the wastefulness of war itself. The truth of a holocaust is not apocalyptic; it comes slowly, relentlessly, word by word. -ByR.Z. Sheppard...