Word: absurdities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...servants and titled sinners, its display of highborn eccentricity, its going in for shameless interruptions at climactic moments, The Confidential Clerk is the glaringly legitimate offspring of Gilbert & Sullivan and Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. Its tone, moreover, is often as artificial as its plot is absurd. But plainly, Eliot's bantering is only skin-deep; plainly his "Who am I?" is no mere parlor game, but a cry from the heart; and his reshufflings of parentage involve revelations about life. Beneath the surface lurk some very large questions about this world and the next, about...
...something immensely relevant to modern life; audiences might fiercely quarrel with Eliot's cure, but they could not deny the disease. But The Confidential Clerk pierces to the spirit without cutting through any flesh. There are moments of illumination, but in general the story, even where symbolic, remains absurd...
...HIGH MARK OF STUPIDITY OR AN UNBELIEVABLE PEAK IN PUBLIC IGNORANCE . . . OVER 2,000 RADIO STATIONS IN THIS COUNTRY HAVE BEEN BORN, NURSED, AND FINANCIALLY MATURED IN SPITE OF YOUR NONSENSICAL IMPLICATION THAT ADVERTISING COMMERCIALS ARE DISAPPROVED . . . PAY-AS-YOU-SEE TV IS THE MOST IDIOTIC, IMPRACTICAL AND ABSURD IDEA FOSTERED IN THE FIELD OF PUBLIC MEDIA . . . NEXT TO RADIO, TV IS THE MOST ECONOMICAL AND EFFICIENT ADVERTISING MEDIUM CREATED...
...fault is plainly our own. We have driven our allies to Russian markets by closing our own with absurd restrictions. Foreign goods that Americans need and want are barred by prohibitive tariffs. Antiquated "Buy American" laws make government expensive and penalize more efficient foreign producers. Paradoxically, Americans have shown themselves more willing to give dollars away than to use them for buying useful foreign goods...
...Pipe Line request, but his chief defense was that "claims" against the Government under the law could involve only money or property. Judge Charles F. McLaughlin agreed and, since he directed the jury to acquit Bergson, the Government cannot appeal. Any other interpretation, said the judge, "would lead to absurd results," and he took the occasion to lecture Government attorneys that the legal interpretation of criminal laws is "not a game to be played." Brownell, who feels that there is an ethical consideration as well, announced that he would ask Congress to close the "loophole...