Word: fats
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...other overblown attempts at humor such as an accidentally flooded living room ("It's my new swimming pool!" Wilder explains, floundering among the floating chairs), shrill and tasteless jibes at homosexuality, and scenes in which the mere sight of fat people is intended to be funny. Wilder can make such devices laughable for a while, but they are worth a chuckle at most, and not the guffaws he tries (and fails) to extract from them. Repeated as often as they are, they become downright boring...
...wishing to improve their verbal-abuse techniques: "Look for a distinguishing characteristic. Each of us is deviant in some way. For instance, I wear glasses, I'm five-foot-seven, 20 pounds overweight, have short hair and a Kissinger accent. So you could start off calling me a fat, four-eyed, runty, reactionary, sewer-mouth Kraut." Still, he considers it unsporting, and sometimes destructive, for cursers to pick on physical characteristics. Says he: "Insults should be aimed at behavior, something a person can change...
...great American concern about weight goes back at least two decades, and over the years millions have plunged into diets and all manner of reducing schemes, from daily jogging to lengthy sojourns at high-priced fat farms. To what effect? Very little, says the National Center for Health Statistics, an offshoot of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In fact, the center reports, men and women in most age and height groups actually weigh more than they did 15 years...
...account for all this added heft? Laments Statistician Sidney Abraham, the main author of the center's report: "Adults are obviously not getting appreciably taller, and they usually do not get more muscular. All we can say is that the weight increase we found is due to fat." One cause might be junk food and quick lunches, eaten hastily. Independent physicians who treat many overweight patients are inclined to put at least as much if not more blame on prolonged TV watching, especially for men who spend many weekend hours entranced by football, enhanced with a six-pack of beer...
...Christmas cheer for Bert Lance. First, Saudi businessman Ghaith Pharaon said he would pay $20 a share (more than 33% above the going rate) for 120,000 shares of the former Budget Director's stock in the National Bank of Georgia. The $2.4 million deal should leave a fat profit (a third of a million or so) in Lance's stocking. Then there was a gift from Wife LaBelle: a family portrait by Atlanta Artist Comer Jennings. LaBelle especially liked how Jennings painted her diamond pendant-the "broken heart," as she calls it, that Bert gave her after...