Word: cynically
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cornpone saga of the "true West." Saul is one of those monstrous Hollywood moths who skirt the flames of venality, yet never get torched. All three men are the progeny of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, that emetically funny moral jeremiad hurled with lethal precision at the cynic American psyche...
...sections of the American psyche. A sneaking preference for what once, generations ago, was called square has broken into the open. Certain values like stable family, satisfyingly useful hard work, competition and excellence have reappeared here and there: the moral equivalents of Bass Weejuns and button-down shirts. A cynic would say that the culture's manic quest for novelty has simply exhausted some of its adventurously kinky experiments (open marriage, bisexuality, a doctrinaire celibacy, banana smoking and roller disco) and so returned to the Real Thing, temporarily no doubt. It is all transient fashion, the cynic would...
Walt Whitman called it "the Presidentiad." Woodrow Wilson referred to it as a "great and solemn referendum." The average voter, whoever he may be, looks on it as a recognition of his own importance. The cynic may think it a waste of good time and money, but the patriot leaps to the ballot box with an unholy joy shining...