Word: bland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Today more than ever, the buzz word among American collectors is "interesting." These four bland syllables are in fact highly coded...
Shortly before the last formal summit session on Saturday morning, Kohl brought Reagan and Mitterrand together for an unscheduled private talk. The U.S. President could not budge his French colleague, and the final summit communique noted only that "most" participants wanted trade talks in early 1986. In context, that bland wording was an unprecedented admission of lack of unanimity. Mitterrand then appeared at a press conference to proclaim, "I have my responsibilities toward France, toward French farm producers and toward Europe. I am defending a just cause...
About 50 veterans, several in wheelchairs, rushed the wall. One rested his head against it, sobbing uncontrollably. Another leaned against the wall and stared bland for several minutes as firework exploded over the East Rivers celebrate the war memorial...
...prisoners, one for travelers, one for creators, and the like. The resulting juxtapositions could be enlightening and provocative and could make for an absorbing book. Unfortunately, Mallon's text leaves us without any resounding insight into the curious business of diary-keeping and his prose is, at best, bland, and more often intrusive for its carelessness, its cliches and its poor attempts at being witty. For example, "Boswell was a veritable American Express card; Johnson could never have left home without it." Or, more seriously, and perhaps more typical of the sort of casual turn of phrase that irritatingly litters...
...mask the moral flaw of self-absorption. When Arnold stingingly accuses Eugene of being "a witness," devoid of passion and commitment, the insight may make an audience reconsider its feelings about the character and also its author, who appears to be musing self-critically about three decades of often bland ingratiation on Broadway, in Hollywood...