Word: erma
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This reversal reflects some shifts in American culture, argues Nancy Walker, who teaches English at Vanderbilt University. Back in 1981, Walker recalls, writer Erma Bombeck told her that more men were coming to her talks and breaking up at columns addressed primarily to women. Bombeck's conclusion: "That means they are doing laundry. They understand that washing machines eat socks." In the '90s these changes are amplified on the nightclub circuit, where 20% of the comics are female, up from perhaps 2% a decade ago. Even that minuscule group used to give itself the short end of the shtick: "When...
...respirator, and the Program is allowed to continue in its weakened state, with a bare minimum of funding, a half-time director and [the Ed School's] half-hearted commitment to Indian education, then these conditions will surely lead to the Program's imminent demise," the open letter quotes Erma Vizenor, the American Indian Students' Association representative to SAC, as saying...
...main upholder of the traditional nuclear family this fall is Roseanne. Pudgy comedian Roseanne Barr plays a working-class mom grappling with a dull factory job, three hyperactive kids and her lazy but lovable porker of a husband (John Goodman). Barr's sullen sarcasm -- a cross between Erma Bombeck and Alice Kramden -- is a cry of revolt against years of cheery sitcom parents. Says Mom after the kids run out the door: "Quick, they're gone. Change the locks...
FAMILY: THE TIES THAT BIND . . . AND GAG! by Erma Bombeck...
...during the geologic age called Early Subdivision, a distracted housewife and sometime journalist named Erma Bombeck discovered what to do with two-week-old tuna casserole: turn the stuff into a howl of a newspaper column. Prepare three times a week; serves 31 million in 900 papers, at latest count. In this eighth book, an amiable reworking of her familiar material, Bombeck is still distracted like a fox and still being funny about her layabout kids and the alien life forms that glow in the back of refrigerators...