Word: blas
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...toga into which you place Gore Vidal [March 28] is, of course, that of Gaius Petronius, the blasé arbiter of tastes under Nero who finally incurred the emperor's wrath and calmly severed his veins. The analogy could be extended: Petronius authored another "bad-tasting" book, the Satyricon, which, like Myra Breckinridge, is a dazzlingly unique contribution to the world's comic literature. Only those whose discrimination is flawless can achieve what Brigid Brophy calls "the dizzying, the rococo heights of true bad taste...
...People who were raised under liberal Republican and Democratic governors, who became blasé about the benefits of such administrations, and who voted for a change are now being awakened-by the closing of unemployment centers, the attempt to charge college tuition, the ouster of University of California President Kerr, and the appointment in all branches of the state government of conservative businessmen. By his actions, Reagan has redefined the word conservative, thus doing more for the Democratic Party than any ten Democratic speakers could...
Generating interest among blasé slum kids-and their parents-has not been easy. An organizer in Newark had to go door to door and hold 25 public meetings to find enough adults to volunteer as Scout workers. In Philadelphia, confronted by parental apathy, an organizer learned that neighborhood youths had been swiping tools off Bell Telephone trucks. He staked out the company garage, caught several of them in the act, and made them the nucleus of a new troop...
...with its planned lunar landing before the decade runs out, no longer seemed a fanciful goal for overambitious scientists. From the scorched launching pads of Cape Kennedy to the lonely tracking ships in the Pacific, Gemini had pumped new life into U.S. space work. And a public grown almost blasé about news of men in orbit waited for the astronauts' return with singular pride...
...Much, Too Soon. From current reports on youth, "meaningful relationships" and "covenants of intimacy" are rampant. Teen-agers put great stock in staying cool. But even discounting the blasé talk, the notion is widely accepted today, on the basis of Kinsey and a few smaller, more recent studies, that the vast majority of American men and at least half the women now have sexual intercourse before marriage. Dr. Graham B. Blaine Jr., psychiatrist to the Harvard and Radcliffe Health Service, estimates that within the past 15 years the number of college boys who had intercourse before graduation rose from...