Word: crassness
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Never in U.S. history has a presidential relative engaged in such aggressively crass exploitation of a genetic coincidence. A couple of F.D.R.'s sons displayed a peculiar, almost prurient interest in their parents' personal lives, but only in books published long after Franklin and Eleanor had died. Margaret Truman's singing career might not have occurred without a father in the White House, but she earned painfully mixed reviews from it. F. Donald Nixon engaged in some murky financing on the strength of his brother's name...
...directors can resist the temptation to dwell on the most obvious differences between the two principals and milk every embarassed chuckle and nervous giggle out of the gag. This is acceptable for the first 15 minutes or so, but the jokes wear mercilessly thin after a while, and crass exploitation soon rears its ugly head. No such problems plague this low-budget entry from Canada, and the film's surprisingly adept treatment of the sensitive subject make Outrageous! something far greater than the bawdy comedy it may appear to be at first glance...
...editors of the American were not especially crass people, and their newspaper was not especially sensationalistic for its time. The American's Titanic edition simply illustrated a central fact of journalistic life: front-page stories about dead Polish immigrants don't sell newspapers. The public wanted stories about its rich and famous heroes, not depressing death reports and unconfirmed rumors suggesting that the ship's crew might have kept a bunch of faceless illiterates with unpronounceable names below until just before the ship sank. So while the front page headlines trumpeted stories of Astor and his heroic pet airedale Kitty...
...give in to crass, commercial lure...
Political conventions may not be as crass and boss-ridden as they once were, but they are just as synthetic in an up-to-date show-biz way. Newsmen used to armor themselves against the hokum by reporting it in the cynically fond style of amused outrage made popular by H.L. Mencken. That tone is harder to sustain these days, and a good many reporters and editors are now asking whether they are covering conventions in the right...