Word: cynic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Gunnar Myrdal explained the U.S.'s state of mind on the Negro problem more succinctly and movingly than anyone else: "The ordinary American is the opposite of a cynic. He is on the average more of a believer and a defender of the faith in humanity than the rest of the Occidentals . . . He investigates his faults, puts them on record, and shouts them from the housetops . . . America's handling of the Negro problem has been criticized most emphatically by white Americans . . . and the criticism . . . will not stop until America has completely reformed itself . . . Mankind is sick of fear and disbelief...
After Australia's Davis Cup team swept through the opening singles without losing a set, one Aussie cynic was moved to remark: "Each set they win is worth an extra $10,000." As it turned out, the cynic was a cautious prophet. Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor finally dropped one set in the doubles match that clinched the cup for Australia, 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4. Then Sedgman whipped Tony Trabert in another straight-set victory, 7-5, 6-4, 10-8. Not until the match score stood at 4-0 could U.S. Player Captain...
...been losing favor with the Red-and-pink salon crowd. When he tells one over-amorous admirer that the atrocity tales were so much party propwash and that he himself was only a stupid bungler in Spain, the lady denounces him to the other pinkos as a low cynic. Hardcaster is only too glad to leave the froth front and take charge of the gunrunning scheme. How the Reds double-cross Hardcaster and decoy the innocent Stamps to their deaths in Spain makes for a mystery-thriller finish to Author Lewis' masterly expose of the fashionable leftism...
Loder, the cynic, and St. John, the rake, crisply thrust and parry with verbal rapiers, while Miss Best as a dowdy but direct matron blunts them both. The frame-work for all this wordplay is Loder's visit to his divorced wife (Brenda Forbes); St. John broke up the marriage five years before and is still hanging around. Miss Best, a relative from Liverpool named Jane, adds her bit to the general tension by entering and announcing her engagement to a man half...
...whole process called "democracy," Adams finds it "nothing more than government of any other kind," but adds, in the words of a half-tolerant cynic: "I grant it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts...