Word: claptrapping
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...dream was born in the claptrap romantic movies of the 1940s. Anachronistic Alice (Ellen Burstyn), who is bright enough in other ways, dimly believes that time has stood implausibly still in Monterey, where she grew up. To her, it is the logical place to resume a career that apparently consisted of a single gig at the local hotel...
...this year's first nine months, v. a $24 million loss in the comparable period last year. Among other things, Borman cut operating costs by supervising the firing of nearly 3,000 Eastern workers, including 870 in higher echelons. "We've done away with committees and claptrap," he says. He regained Eastern's reputation for punctuality by rearranging some schedules, dropping others, and improving baggage handling. He has also started "friendliness" classes for some 9,000 Eastern employees who deal with the public. Says Borman: "There's no fancy footwork, no easy...
...brief compass the author manages to bring off a remarkable range of scenes and situations, from academic Cambridge to the black underbelly of Roxbury (where Ken teaches awhile) to an orgy involving the apple pickers, a family Civil War sword and a death by drowning. Under the black comic claptrap in Black Conceit is a deeply felt, uncompromising book about an idealist's disappointment that human nature does not prove perfectible, that human decency, liberally applied, cannot suspend the law of the jungle. "We go on making choices, after the original helplessness," Coffin reflects, "and ultimately it becomes...
...that New York "humanist" school [Dec. 3]. They are the type that wants to give us abolition of the death penalty, gun control (job insurance for the working street goon), mass busing (so your kids and mine can get mugged for sociology's sake) and all the other claptrap we rejected in the last national election...
...that this is escapist claptrap. MacDonald offers something far more profound, the claptrap...