Word: genteelism
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Planning for the Future. Harrington in effect demands a change in human nature-and an American willingness to accept the taxes and the "well-intentioned, genteel totalitarianism" of a Government giving first priority to the "criteria of social need." He does not say exactly so, but seems to be well aware that no such large cooperative society has ever been achieved without strong coercion. The political transformation he envisions is a vast, new coalition of the Left-most likely taking over the Democratic Party-made up of the poor, both white and Negro, a "reinvigorated labor movement," and the Galbraithean...
...Statesman), which make him a rival of Edmund Wilson as the best literary critic in the English language. Now an angry old man of 67, Pritchett vents some of the redbrick ferocity of early Osborne or Amis-though with more elegance-as he writes of the genteel poverty and violent lower-middle-class life that he survived...
...Genteel Banter. M.I.T. Humanities Professor Louis Kampf contends that many English teachers now recoil from stressing literature's illumination of life. They fear that voicing strong opinions is not only "a bad breach of manners," but might jeopardize their careers; thus confine themselves to "genteel banter." Historian Staughton Lynd, who has carried his beliefs into angry dissent from the Viet Nam war, criticizes historians who limit themselves to defining and analyzing forces in society. He asks acidly: "Should we be content with measuring the dimension of our prison instead of chipping, however inadequately, against the bars...
...past when presidential nominees, untested in the primaries, would be named in smoke-filled rooms by political bosses." Thus Rockefeller's tabernacle of unity becomes Nixon's den of iniquity. They have each promised to support the other in the general election, but until the convention the genteel barbs will be there. While renewing his pledge to Nixon, for instance, Rockefeller took a dig at his weakness: "The party has got to make up its mind on who has a real chance of getting the votes of independents and Democrats...
Minor Details. In quieter publishing days before World War II, an agent was usually little more than a genteel go-between for artist and publisher. His main activities were directed not toward books, but toward magazines; they paid a set amount for each article or story, the agent got his 10% cut, and the deal was finished. Arrangements with book publishers were considered a nuisance. Paul Reynolds, 64-year-old son of the founder of the venerable Paul Reynolds agency, recalls that his father declined to represent Novelist Willa Cather because he wanted nothing to do with checking periodic royalty...