Word: evens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Clearly, the U.S. is now buffeted by a public atmosphere that has grown chronically and pervasively cautionary. Apprehensive outcries wail forth from broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, posters, labels, environmental journals, medical tracts, Government reports, even books. One of the books is a brand-new broadside by Dr. Charles T. McGee, a clinical ecologist of Alamo, Calif., who is quoted above. His 220-page polemic issues a general alarm about multifarious dangers that lurk in every nook and cranny of contemporary civilization. Even fluorescent lighting, he says, may, in some weird way, weaken the muscles. The book, billed as a "crash course...
...those about pollutants included. Scotch and beer have joined the list of potables that may contain dangerous chemicals. So has mother's milk, in which PCBS have turned up. Birth defects could be linked to caffeine from coffee or any source, it was reported just last month. Even peanut butter, as an occasional bearer of aflatoxin, has been flagged as a menace. Driving? Fasten the seat belt- unless discouraged by warnings that most of them do not work. On the road, even rest-room signs often gratuitously warn against VD. Flying? Remember that some pas sengers get ozone poisoning...
...Perhaps the surest sign that the admonitory mood is taking a toll is the fact that Americans have begun to write advice columnists about the problems that all the cautions cause. Warnings about cholesterol in eggs, nitrate in bacon, caffeine in coffee (and, a while back, risky chemicals in even the decaffeinated variety) have sapped the fun out of eating breakfast for some people, it seems. Wrote one such: "I'd try bread and water, but I'm pretty sure that as soon as I begin to enjoy it, I'll find...
Though sophisticates have long sneered at him, Norman Vin cent Peale, who said that "you do not need to be a victim of worry," was not entirely wrong. Thinkers more serious than Peale have construed a fearful attitude as a danger in itself. Jesus of Nazareth advised against fretting even about tomorrow. Psychologist William James saw life itself as a process of risk taking and thought it was debilitating to take risks too much to heart He urged people to will themselves to be confident of survival, to pretend confidence if necessary, allowing not even the "sweet' cautions...
...Medals for Dishonor inspired by the Spanish Civil War, later with a number of drawings that tried, in effect, to do a Bruegel on fascism. These desolate landscapes, populated by knotty women copulating with cannon, are postsurrealist cliches-although they make clear Smith's erotic feelings about steel. Even so, they are full of the harsh, graphic intensity that would soon burst forth in his sculpture...