Word: glum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Subtle shifts in physical and mental health leave their mark on presidential actions. Without his throbbing back would Kennedy have been quite so glum after his 1961 Vienna summit with Nikita Khrushchev and spread so much alarm in the country? Hindsight suggests that the U.S. may have done a little more nervous saber rattling that summer than the situation in Berlin really required...
Vinnie once had a husband but has adjusted to living alone. A frequent companion is an imaginary mutt that she conjures up in glum moments. This shaggy symbol of self-pity recently appeared after a critic dismissed her work with the question, "Do we really need a scholarly study of playground doggerel?" The author of the offending article, L.D. Zimmern, turns out to be the father of Fred's estranged wife. The coincidence seems to have been extended as an ironic gratuity signaling solemn readers that Foreign Affairs is, despite pathos, sudden death and madness, an adroitly bundled comedy...
Despite such contrived attempts at editorial balance, the spectrum among columnists does seem more brightly colored on the right. The dwindling band of liberal columnists, the liveliest of whom is Mary McGrory, frequently write like glum recyclers of views no longer in vogue. Right-wingers are apt to be more ardent proselyters, some using the eruditely disdainful style of arguing they learned on Bill Buckley's National Review...
Crime Fighting Can Be Fun. TV's glum professionals, from Sergeant Joe Friday to Lieut. Kojak, have given way to a new breed of lighthearted crime fighters, very '80s guys and gals who read the riot act with tongue firmly in cheek. The wisecracks are often tossed back and forth between a pair of mismatched partners, but these folks can laugh in the face of death too. (A cop on ABC's new Hawaiian Heat says to his buddy, who has just been lowered by helicopter to save his life: "Nice of you to drop...
Naturally. Landing finally at her brother's place, she decides that the cure for his glum raffishness must be pets on whom he can practice a responsible form of loving. Forthwith, she goes out and buys a menagerie of ducks, a goat, an affably neurotic dog and a pair of miniature horses that trot, puzzled but agreeable, through the house. It is as she tells her psychiatrist: "I'm going to get my balance. Then I can go back to being obsessed with my family...