Word: crassness
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...years ago, somewhere north of the Mekong Delta. They are certainly no longer driven by a desire to "pay any price, bear any burden," as John Kennedy said, to ensure the liberties of others around the world. In a way, the crisis in the gulf brings together a fortuitously crass coincidence of American idealism and materialism; Americans look to punish the aggressor and protect their energy supplies at the same time...
...Stories of Seduction goes heavily Hollywood -- marquee- worthy directors, proven scriptwriters, a cast of (mostly) stars -- in its rather literal rendering of three modern classics. In Mary McCarthy's The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt (adapted and directed by Frederic Raphael), a radical journalist (Elizabeth McGovern) meets a crass business executive (Beau Bridges) who makes use of his booze and her boredom to lure her into a one- night stand during a transcontinental railroad trip. (Those were the days!) Owlish and pudgy, Bridges is right for his role, but pillow-soft McGovern is wrong for hers. And many...
Money is still important as an indicator of career performance, but crass materialism is on the wane. Marian Salzman, 31, an editor at large for the collegiate magazine CV, believes the shift away from the big-salary, big-city role model of the early '80s is an accommodation to the reality of a depressed Wall Street and slack economy. Many boomers expected to have made millions by the time they reached 30. "But for today's graduates, the easy roads to fast money have dried up," says Salzman...
...theory that different nations have different national characters, that the Germans, because of their history or their upbringing or whatever, are both aggressive and docile, robot-like people who love order and discipline, work and war. Like the stereotypes of the snobbish English or the immoral French or the crass Americans, such caricatures are generally created by one's enemies, often in times of war. "There is such a thing as national character, but it changes," says William Manchester, a Wesleyan University adjunct professor of history and author of The Arms of Krupp. "And the German national character has changed...
Before the hoopla subsides, Harvard students and other citizens of the earth should consider the message of Earth Day (April 26) and Earth Week (April 20-27): prosperity at the expense of posterity is no bargain. The crass commercialization of this year's Earth Day events does not detract from the importance of this message...