Word: backwards
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thailand. Elections ordered by the new strongman, Marshal Sarit, were completed last week. Fellow travelers are reeling backward, deprived of the support of Pibulsonggram, whom Sarit ousted in last September's coup. Rice is cheap and plentiful. Sarit and all major parties back Thailand's past SEATO commitments, and prospects are that the country will continue prosperous and stable...
...Downs Sir: In the past few weeks this country has accustomed itself to the fact that we are technologically backward. I assume this will be properly investigated by the usual brass-bottom parties. But we are now faced with the fact that we are so inept and so ineffectual in the matter of public relations that we have advertised ourselves as dolts to the entire world...
...world. Impact: shock, scorn, derision. Almost instantly the U.S.'s tiny, grounded satellite got rechristened stallnik, flopnik, dudnik, puffnik, phutnik, oopsnik, goofnik, kaputnik and-closer to the Soviet original-sputternik. At the U.N., Soviet diplomats laughingly suggested that the U.S. ought to try for Soviet technical assistance to backward nations. An office worker in Washington burst into tears; a calypso singer on the BBC in London strummed a ditty about Oh, from America comes the significant thought/Their own little Sputnik won't go off. Said a university professor in Pittsburgh: "It's our worst humiliation since Custer...
...democracy and the West. Overwhelmed by his sentiments and his charm, Washington's National Press Club gave him a standing ovation. Last week Sukarno was displaying his devotion to the West by energetically trying to boot out of his country all Westerners of Dutch citizenship, with never a backward thought for their rights or their properties...
...LEGACY, by Sibille Bedford. A cool, backward look at Victorian and Edwardian Europe, a time when the big rich were truly idle and upperclass life was dedicated to an endless battle with boredom. Middle-aged First-Novelist Bedford turns the cosmopolitan novel, a rare enough product nowadays, into an immensely entertaining remembrance-and indictment-of things past...