Word: absurd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...only say that I found Durang's musical a sheer delight and not in the least offensive. To compare it, as one letter did (CRIMSON, 11/30), to "a musical satire of the life and death of Malcolm X or a rollicking revue of the atrocities at Auschwitz" is absurd. Both the death of Malcolm X and the atrocities at Auschwitz were tragic events, and to lampoon them would be to make a cruel joke out of human suffering. But the New Testament, at least for believing Christians, is not a "tragedy." Behind the crucifixion stands the resurrection. It is instead...
...Department prosecuted both Chevron Oil Co. for spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Power & Light Co. for dumping hot water into Biscayne Bay. Detroit reeled after the Clean Air Act mandated pollution-free cars by 1975 ?an order that automakers called technically impossible and downright absurd...
...intelligence officials insist that the Communist guerrillas are so disturbed by Thieu's attempt to paint all of South Viet Nam into his corner that they have launched a campaign to deface the ubiquitous flags. Even so, the whole effort struck some as absurd. The Vietnamese satirical magazine Mosquito, for example, has recommended that to help the government distinguish between Communists and loyalists, "each citizen should have his head shaved like a monk and then have the national flag painted...
...overdo. In recent decades, on the other hand, critics have rescued him from his earlier reputation as a hearthside moralist and improvising Toby-jug showman. Readers are now ready to acknowledge with Wilson that Dickens "leaps the century and speaks to our fears, our violence, our trust in the absurd, more than any other English Victorian writer." It no longer seems so far from the chancery court in Bleak House to Kafka's trial of Joseph...
...could be justified by something his buddies did to incite Mrs. West that was even more provocative than waving a gun. According to the court majority, the verbal threat of "execution" and the agitated demeanor of the gunmen provided the necessary additional provocation. To the dissenters, this distinction seemed "absurd." They insisted that a verbal threat to use a drawn gun is redundant...