Word: genteelism
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PRESS POISON. Do not swallow!" was a leftist poster slogan in the May 1968 French uprising. We Americans could well heed this warning. Newspaper owners and Voice of America broadcasters love to brag about this country's free, objective press. Meanwhile, news management--a genteel euphemism for lying--is often the order...
Hepburn plays Hepburn in the guise of Mrs. Basil, an aging aristocrat who presides over a 200-year-old country mansion with the formidable whimsicality of a genteel Caligula. While she professes a regard for tradition, she is singularly permissive about the succession of weirdos who populate the play...
...stalking grounds were usually genteel English houses, and she rarely strayed. "I could never manage miners talking in pubs," she once said, "because I don't know what miners talk about in pubs." Dame Agatha herself looked as if she had been raised on a good golf course, although her main hobbies were gardening, and buying and redecorating houses...
...fallen into the academic life at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. There she taught geography to Bengali girls from comfortable homes, later became principal. But the school was hard by Calcutta's Moti Jheel slum, and the contrast between the horror outside and the genteel world within the convent walls must have motivated her decision to work for the poor, though she claims that it did not. What did change her she remembers vividly...
...Bridge of San Luis Key (1927) and for his plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). But his gifts-the polished style, the scholarly allusions, the slightly didactic plots with an elegant touch of mysticism-were viewed in critical circles as relics of the genteel tradition. His optimism ("He says nice things whenever possible," one acquaintance complained) was regarded as a threat to his integrity...