Word: downrightness
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...comedy of humors, which was at base the comedy of consistent thought and action. A humor, as Elizabethan playwrights defined it, was an exaggerated human trait, a leaning of disposition so severe as to create a caricature. Thus a character in a comedy of humors would be called Squire Downright, and only downright would he act. In 1900, Henri Bergson proposed an elaborate theory of laughter based on just such a condition. Bergson held that we expect all things human, or connected to the human, to be pliant and fluid. Therefore any demonstration of human inflexibility is potentially funny...
ONLY THE RED BULL and a few other downright evil characters show glimpses of animated genius. Every detail of the red-pink bull steams with uncontrollable evil--especially the transparency of its imposing body. Two peripheral characters--Captain Cully the peg-legged pirate cat and a pile of bones forming a distorted skeleton--momentarily memorize the audience, as doss the terrifying flying beast Harpy, the evil counterpart of the unicorn. Otherwise, a dearth of fluid detail hampers the illusion...
...week centered on Chernenko or Tikhonov for the presidency if Andropov does not aspire to it himself. Andropov's behind-the-scenes maneuvering should keep him fully occupied as he moves to consolidate his power. Meanwhile, the signals emanating from Moscow are likely to remain ambiguous, if not downright confusing. -By Patricia Blake. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow
AUSTRALIA. This nation is suffering a bout of stagflation. Said Board Member Drysdale: "Policymakers are bewildered if not downright rattled by what is happening." Hefty wage demands by Australian workers have fueled inflation, now running at a rate of more than 11.5%. To trim costs, companies have slashed their payrolls, and unemployment has swelled to 7.8%, the highest level in half a century. To make matters worse, Australia's southern and eastern states are enduring their fiercest drought in 40 years...
...conservative editors vary in approach from the scholarly, even pedantic, to the strident or downright offensive. The label conservative seems to embrace as many viewpoints on campus as in society at large, ranging from Jeffersonian calls for states' and individuals' rights to Moral Majority attacks on feminism and abortion, and even some racist-tinged critiques of affirmative action. But the editors, diverse as they are, trade notes and have come to constitute an informal network. That delights Columnist William Buckley, a major patron of the Dartmouth Review and a hero to most of the rightist student editors. Buckley...