Word: airhead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Examine one fairly new item: airhead. It means, of course, a brainless person, someone given to stupid behavior and opinions. But it is a vacuous, dispiriting little effort. The word has no invective force or metaphorical charm. When slang settles for the drearily literal (airhead equals empty head), it is too tired to keep up with the good stuff...
Thayer's wile, Ethel--Norman and Ethel, now there's a pair of old folk's names--is utterly sunny. As Ethel. Hepburn, is a sort of superannuated dryad, prancing in the woods, picking berries, skinny-dipping and crooning paeans to nature. By no means an airhead. Ethel happily flips the birdie at a passing motor cruiser that ploughs by the Thayers' canoe. Moreover, she knows Norman is not the crotchety old coot he appears. Rather, he is a wonderfully warm fellow who happens to be obsessed with death. Norman and Ethel are, of course, very much in love...
Private Benjamin pretends to be about feminine consciousness and identity, about a woman "finding herself" in a man's world, but its silliness and simplicity insults all feminists, male and female. Judy Benjamin (Goldie Hawn) is an airhead. A Jewish American Princess, she's not funny and she's not cute; she'd not even pitiful--just plain dumb...
After the Air Force, Hagman tried his luck off-Broadway, then did a two-year stint on The Edge of Night. There were several modest roles in movies, including one memorable semivillain in The Group. But Hagman's most important part before Dallas was in the airhead sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. For Hagman it was the big break. He worked constantly, rewriting scripts, fighting to get the best possible performers. "I was driven, compulsive," he remembers. "I yelled at people. Finally I couldn't take it any more. I started to vomit...