Word: cliches
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Name me a leader in America today," demanded Congressman Adam Clayton Powell recently, and for once Powell may have said it right. Nearly everywhere, the places of power seem occupied by faceless and forgettable bureaucrats, technocrats or nonentities. "Charisma," one of the dominant clichés of the '60s, is clearly on the wane. Charles de Gaulle has left the Elysée Palace to his former lieutenant, Georges Pompidou, a banker and lover of poetry who, however, shows little poetry in his political style. West Germany has not had an inspirational leader since Adenauer, or Britain since Churchill...
...vain attempt to make a movie out of all this, Director Tom Gries inserts dozens of pauses between the clichés, some seemingly as long as a half time ceremony. Charlton Heston brings his usual Pleistocene presence to the part of Cat, presumably granted him because his rain-barrel chest wouldn't look scrawny in the locker-room scenes, but everyone else stands around looking sort of embarrassed. The last tackle comes as a welcome relief, as Heston and the film fall one final time to the gridiron with a resounding thud...
...easy to say that English is an ageless language ever renewed by fresh words and concepts. But lately it has been polluted by creeping neologisms and solecisms, many of them spawned by military jargon, television clichés and youthcult dialects. Should lexicographers rubber-stamp the linguistic junk or rear back and proclaim standards...
...cliché of U.S. fiction that the lust for power, fame and money destroys the integrity of anyone scrambling to the top, especially in the entertainment world. The heroine of Morris Renek's strong second novel seems, at first glance, to be formfitted to the cliché. Sexy, bright and beautiful, she is determined to make it big as a popular singer any way she can. She succeeds. What is more extraordinary, so does Renek, somehow using a sentimental and unpromising plot to explore the nature of power, the exploitation of sex and some of the redeeming qualities...
...that occurred during World War II seems more terrible in retrospect than the blunders that led up to it-not only at Versailles but during the deadly political charade that immediately preceded 1939. Neville Chamberlain tap-tapping to Munich with his umbrella, Hitler screaming hatred from peaceful Berchtesgaden-these cliché figures still have a power to disturb that few living villains can match...