Word: blather
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lying drunk and unshaven, with his nose mashed against the baseboard of a crummy bathroom. Not many of Hollywood's firm-jawed preeners would have allowed the shot, but he has taken pains to look as gruesome as possible. It is an obvious mockery of the "sex symbol" blather that makes him writhe. He refuses to play out the celebrity part. He will not sign autographs because, says his Westport buddy Writer A.E. Hotchner (Papa Hemingway), "the majesty of the act is offensive to him." Hotchner goes on to say, "He is the most private...
...itself, that Nemy doesn't have the worldview necessary to understand why life is unfair, or that she wouldn't know a welfare mother if she tripped over one between apartment house lobby and limo. The world is full of ignorant people. But the Times, by allowing Nemy to blather on about upper class living, makes itself party to the fascination that skews our awareness of where this nation is really headed. Nemy is only one of a growing army of journalists singing the praises of affluence on the pages on some of the nation's leading periodicals. Newspapers that...
Such words babble up in all corners of society, wherever anybody is ax-grinding, arm-twisting, backscratching, sweet-talking. Political blather leans sharply to words (peace, prosperity) whose moving powers outweigh exact meanings. Merchandising depends on adjectives (new, improved) that must be continually recharged with notions that entice people to buy. In casual conversation, emotional stuffing is lent to words by inflection and gesture: the innocent phrase, "Thanks a lot," is frequently a vehicle for heaping servings of irritation. Traffic in opinion-heavy language is universal simply because most people, as C.S. Lewis puts it, are "more anxious to express...
...have anything to do with the applications." It's peacetime." "I am not convinced I desire a weak Air Force." "No one else has the money." In one way or another, all the answers make sense. But in a fundamental sense, they're all to much blather...
Despite their ideological differences, members of the Marxist-Leninist Party have provided the week-long string of rallies with a touch of the dramatic as they perform and re-perform a morality play showing Mean Ole Uncle Sam deceiving the ignorant army recruit with the blather-headed aid of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan...