Word: crass
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Americans have grown inured to crass commercialism taken to excess, with corporate sponsorship profaning everything from bowl games to the Bill of Rights. But somehow Thanksgiving has resisted the blandishments of an age of avarice. How the greeting-card sharpies and the flower-power florists must lament a national holiday in which they are doomed to play such a minor role. For if one cares to send the very best, one flies home for Thanksgiving. Even the TV networks have never figured out a way to transform Thanksgiving into a prime-time pageant, which is why the Macy's Parade...
...grace under the carver's blade have fascinated humanity. Ivory anklets and combs have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and King Solomon is said to have sat upon an ivory throne. In its myriad forms, ivory has been a medium expressing both virtue and vice, creativity and crass extravagance. It has been used in rosary beads, pistol grips, lutes, dice, scepters, toothpicks, prayer wheels, fly whisks, mah-jongg tiles and chopsticks. In the past century, traders greedy for ivory attacked and burned African villages. Natives were sold into slavery and forced to shoulder the tusks out of the interior...
...communicate. "I'm seen as terribly abrupt and abrasive," says Nevin. "If you're very direct, you're admired in American culture. The Japanese culture is much more subtle. I can never get them to tell me what they actually mean, and they may think I'm rude and crass. But both sides are only behaving in ways familiar to their own cultures...
...only aspect of this century-old anecdote that might be dated is Adams' surprise. This year, when Harvard sifted through 12,843 applications to fill 1,605 places in the class of '93, undoubtedly many of these would-be students (and their parents) were motivated by equally crass considerations. Popular wisdom asserts that getting a pedigree from an Ivy League school is worth more in terms of future income and social standing than attending any of several dozen other academically rigorous colleges and universities...
...backwater insurance agent turned blockbuster novelist Tom Clancy. Forget the four straight best sellers published since 1984 and the 20 million copies sold. Forget the movie version of his first novel, now in production. Forget the $4 million advance for his latest thriller, Clear and Present Danger. Forget such crass calculus of cash- register commerce...