Word: bland
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Chinese national anthem sounded first last week on the south lawn of the White House, as summit protocol demands. Then the U.S. Army Band gave an equally rousing version of The Star-Spangled Banner. From a windswept podium on the crest of the low hill, the two leaders exchanged bland welcoming remarks, then mounted a balcony to acknowledge the applauding crowd of some 1,000 dignitaries. Suddenly, Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing departed from the traditional script. He impulsively grabbed Jimmy Carter's hand and held it high. They looked like a pair of politicians just...
Although they warmed up toward the end of their visit, the Chinese reporters exasperated quote-hungry Americans with their studied reticence and spirit of bland approval. Ultimately, the expansive city of Houston inspired one reporter to venture a faintly salty comment. Confronted by an exhibit of lunar modules, space suits and moon buggies at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center, he saw fit to paraphrase ex-Premier Chou Enlai: "We have too many problems down here on earth. Until we solve them, there's no point in going to the moon...
...stage softens him, neutralizing the eccentricities on which he has built a fascinating film career. Sherman Yellen's drama, about the stormy relationship between Sinclair Lewis and journalist Dorothy Thompson, might have been written as a dull screen biography of a famous American, but Hollywood stopped investing in those bland tear-jerkers decades ago. So it winds up on Broadway, with a film star intent on "flexing his acting muscles" in a role that taps a fraction of his considerable talents...
...odds do not seem good for McGraw-Hill's management. In tender offers over the past ten years, the target company has been acquired 85% of the time either by the initial aggressor or by another bidder. Even Lipton, who with his pale, bland face and dark shapeless suits looks like an ambitious bank clerk, admits: "Cash offers are rarely defeated." Two years ago, he fended off Congoleum Corp.'s cash offer for Universal Leaf Tobacco. Says a Wall Street merger and acquisition specialist: "Marty tied Congoleum up for over eight months in the courts...
With chains now controlling 71% of daily circulation, the absentee owners prefer bland, trouble-free editorial pages. Only outside columnists are allowed to be noisy, querulous and opinionated. Even here, chain management usually dilutes the effect with a "spectrum" of opinion, in a look-no-hands neutrality between conservative, liberal and middle-of-the-road. Those among the columnists who are also in television develop a manner to go with the act-William F. Buckley Jr., arch and fastidious; James J. Kilpatrick, full of pretend bluster. When Kilpatrick takes the conservative side against Shana Alexander...