Word: crass
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...administration such as Nixon's, where crass corruption has cut so deep, any modicum of integrity can seem to be admirable. Against the dismal background of Watergate, the refusal of Elliot L. Richardson '41 last October to fire former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox '34 appeared a welcome relief. But Richardson's minimal act, clearly also an act of political necessity, did not erase his earlier record. Nor did his supposed act of conscience remedy the vicious policies of which Watergate was the dramatic consequence--policies Richardson helped implement as Secretary of Defense and earlier as Secretary of Health, Education...
Every critic seems, at some point, to be influenced by this syndrome; at their best, the put-downs are clever and amusing--at their worst, crass and tasteless. But what's always offensive about the syndrome is that it is antithetical to any exchange of ideas. It's much easier to come up with a put-down than with solid reasoning explaining why a critic disagreed with or disliked a film...
Pending such feats of instant nostalgia, all we are left with is the pictures. The crass cultural chauvinism and blatant flackery that surrounded and fed American pop have not by any means gone from the art scene, but they are muted. All the talk about how pop meant a democratization of the art experience, how it would obliterate the line between "art" and "life," has turned out to be the merest jive. It could hardly be expected to convince anyone in a world where Lichtensteins cost $50,000 apiece...
SOREST LOSERS: The Exorcist bunch, miming superiority to the whole business as crass commercial competitors kept walking off with the prizes that they felt their delicate little art film should have...
What is offensive about the new "realistic" cops-and-robbers movies is not that they are (fashionably) nihilistic, but that they are crass and simple-minded. In their world everyone is contemptible, acting solely out of venality or lust. No human institution can be trusted, and the few men able to derive order from society are strong-arm maverick cops...