Word: decorum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...before she began her speech, student protesters shouted epithets and chanted, "Murderer! Nazi! Fascist, go home!" (The "Nazi" vocabulary is promiscuously adaptable.) Smith College invited Kirkpatrick to be its commencement speaker this spring, and prepared to award her an honorary degree. The school then decided it could not guarantee decorum if Kirkpatrick came to speak, and so she withdrew...
...literally bursts. It sounds horrible. It is horrible. It is also extraordinarily funny. For the headwaiter, sublimely played by John Cleese, hovers fussily over a man who is, after all, his best customer while the rest of the diners do their utmost to keep small talk flowing and decorum intact. The result is a devastating attack on the human (or is it merely middle class?) propensity for maintaining the genteel amenities no matter how brutally reality assails them...
...give the two workers a change to rescue their integrity, the inspectors sent along a "decoy" package of KitKat candybars. An impartial observer might question the decorum of this move, reminiscent of recent Washington scams involving FBI agents dressed as Arab sheiks offering U.S. Congressmen large sums of money for their votes on crucial issues. The strategy also seems doubtful--Snickers or perhaps peanut M&Ms would seem like better choices. But despite these drawbacks, the scam succeeded. Wilson and Ferguson could not resist the urge familiar to every late-night paper writer. They decimated the package of KitKats...
...dramatic, Erin Fleming, 42, was Groucho Marx's companion for the last six years of his life. Whatever their life was like together, the battle being waged in Santa Monica, Calif., between Fleming and the bank that was named as Marx's executor has had all the decorum of the courtroom scene in Duck Soup. In the seven-week case, which goes to the jury this week, the Bank of America accused her of gulling the comedian out of $428,000 before he died in 1977 at the age of 86. After outbursts in court, Fleming was examined...
Inside, all is propriety and decorum, from the high ceilings, and dark wood panelling to the hushed voices of waiters pouring coffee...