Word: faddish
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From the lofty vantage of the Holy See, perhaps, feminism is a faddish outside force that will dwindle one day. But in the U.S., and to a lesser extent in Western Europe, it is an entrenched force in secular society and, increasingly, in Catholic agencies, campuses and parishes. In some liberal Protestant churches, the women's movement is on its way to becoming the single most important influence over how members worship and what they believe...
Mystique and faddish lore have long surrounded these essential biochemical ; compounds. Consider vitamins C and E. "Somebody has made practically every claim you could dream of about these vitamins," points out John Hathcock, chief of the experimental-nutrition branch of the Food and Drug Administration. People have been gobbling vitamin C for 20 years in the certainty that it can cure the common cold, though evidence is still lacking. Vitamin E has been wildly popular for four decades because of its putative power to enhance sexual performance. In fact, studies indicate only that it is necessary for normal fertility...
...forgotten, however, when reporters like Goodman focus on everything else but the trial at hand. The situation is tempting, for what writer or critic would refuse a chance to look at this trial? It's juicy, sexy, colorful and demanded by the public. The same principles apply to other "faddish" events which mix hard news with sensational and sordid events--like the Clarence Thomas hearings, the Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker scandals and the recent David Duke gubernatorial campaign...
What Bismarck said of legislation and sausages, one must also admit of the more titillating varieties of journalism: those who love the product would do well not to examine the process too closely. That is especially so with the faddish nonfiction genre of factual crime reconstructions, in which, for tactical reasons of getting the inside story, authors generally ally themselves either with careerist police detectives and prosecutors, or with pathetic victims cooperating in a further invasion of their privacy, or with criminals. Each bond can be unseemly, its results distorting...
When old coherences break down, civilities and tolerances fall away as well. So does an ideal of self-reliance and inner autonomy and responsibility. The new tribes, strident and anxious and dogmatic, push forward to impose a new order. Yet they seem curiously faddish, unserious: youth culture unites with hypochondria and a childish sense of entitlement. Long ago, Carry Nation actually thought the U.S. would be better off if everyone stopped drinking. The busybodies today worry not about their society but about themselves -- they imagine that they would be beautiful and virtuous and live forever, if only you would...