Word: banality
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Particularly in Oklahoma, Bentsen had good organization, the support of some of the state's best-known politicians and plenty of money (nationwide he had spent more than $2.4 million). But his campaigning lacked force and personality, and his banal statements on the issues apparently persuaded many Oklahoma voters that he was a weak candidate. Bentsen will stay in the May 1 Texas primary as a favorite-son candidate, chiefly to demonstrate his home-state strength as a vote getter and enhance his prospects for re-election this year to the Senate. Thus, even before the first primary...
...usage. He shows how it strengthened British stoicism in literary style, something Fussell calls "Phlegm," as in this letter home: "Move to trenches Hebuterne. Strafing and a certain dampness." He also presents us with the origins of the widespread use of form letters. British soldiers who tired of writing banal letters home--the only kind that could get by the censors--could write out a "Form A. 2042," also known as the "Whizz Bang" or "Quick Firer." The entire letter was couched in euphemistic phrases, and contained no way of saying one was going to the front. One could only...
...Your Way, And I'll Go Mine (You say you love me and you're thinking of me/But you know you could be wrong...); and 4th Time Around. It recurs here in Isis, and, given the narrator's account of his adventures the result is an astonishingly banal conversation...
...screenplay by Thomas Wiseman from his novel of the same name, with the collaboration of playwright Tom Stoppard, is not as subtly revealing of character as the direction and editing. In fact much of it is irritatingly banal--the few funny moments, presumably contributed by Stoppard, seem like the last-minute contrivances. Comic relief is pretty welcome during this film, though, no matter how forced it may be. When the wife and the gigolo finally fulfill their artificially arranged estiny by running off together, the husband tries to track them down. He notices that a mysterious car has been following...
...fondness for the antithesis, for the oxymoron; but in his recent writings the language degenerates into phrases that are cliches before they are coined: "the masses have chosen as their religion the condition of not having one, without knowing," vulgarity is the full bloom of conformity," or "this banal originality." Pasolini owed his fame as a poet to the fact that he appeared on the Italian literary stage at a time when there were few other performers. He became a success because he managed to write poetry that filled a political function: a poetry the Left could use as cultural...