Word: cliches
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...thought processes of the Nixon Administration. But tantalizing glimpses are possible through the aperture of the Ervin hearings. By now, of course, the Nixonian cadre has turned a few phrases to bromides, notably the sci-fi sounds: "At that point in time," and, "In that time frame." Still, these clichés are excellent indicators of the Administration's unwritten laws of language: 1) never use a word when a sentence will do; 2) obscure, don't clarify; 3) Humpty Dumpty was right when he said to Alice: "When I use a word . . . it means just what...
...Watergate case Richard Nixon's "seventh crisis," as an instant and inevitable cliché would have it? Not likely, when it is recalled that the last great trauma in the President's 1962 bestseller Six Crises was the Nixon-Kennedy campaign of 1960-of which he wrote: "Where an individual has carried on his shoulders the hopes of millions, he then faces his greatest test."* Based on the criteria implicit in the cases of the first six, the updated list might look like this...
...know the cliché that the wife is the last to know about her husband's affair. Why, then, is it inconceivable that President Nixon was uninformed about the activities of his subordinates? ANITA LOIS MCDERMOTT Roanoke...
...Actors. Current news of public officials indicted or newly convicted of crimes sustains the ancient cliché of democratic life-that politics is a dirty business. Yet most professional politicians and a great many other observers of American life are convinced that despite all the depressing evidence, American politics is not endemically corrupt, and that Watergate is not to be used for glib generalizations...
...blow her off her unsteady feet with little gusts of adolescent energy. They nearly do not get together. Miss Fisher, despairing of herself and of some mysterious, occasionally violent speech impediment, attempts suicide, but is revived by the eager Walter, who finds himself bleating all manner of hortatory clichés:"We're free!"; "We have to smile in the rain!"; "We're coming alive!" Soon they whistle and wheeze together...