Word: hapless
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Franklin Roosevelt's campaign song. After 16 years of Republican rule in the state, a Democratic candidate was finally putting back together the old Roosevelt coalition of labor, liberals and minorities. So successful was his political surgery that Carey enjoyed a triumphant 3-to-2 victory over his hapless G.O.P. opponent, Governor Malcolm Wilson...
...always been a classic mismatch: impervious electronics v. mortal flesh. The computer bills the consumer incorrectly. The consumer writes a letter of protest. The computer ignores the message and all further pleas while grimly sending out tougher and tougher dunning notes and threatening to whistle in the lawyers. The hapless customer may struggle for years to break through the cordon of computers and get to a human being who can understand the problem...
...like his past story collections-fragmented, humming with vaguely malevolent absurdities. This book's innocent pleasures stem from seeing how far the author can jump. The Consumer Bulletin Annual, for instance, hardly seems a bouncy platform for whimsy. Yet Barthelme somersaults from it into the tale of a hapless soul whose purchases consistently turn out to be substandard. "Consider the case of the bedside clock. 'Check for loudness of tick,' the Annual said. I checked. It ticked. Tick seemed decorous. Once installed in home, it boomed like...
...cliche goes, records can be thrown out when the Crimson meets the Tigers. Proof of that can be found in last year's game as a 5-1 Harvard team scraped out a 19-14 win over what was expected to be a hapless 1-5 Princeton outfit...
Today's game between Harvard and Columbia marks the 33rd meeting between the Ivy League rivals. Ho hum. The hapless Lions have beaten the Crimson only once in the last 12 years, and that win was by default. The Columbia contest is traditionally the warm-up game for Harvard's ensuing Ivy League schedule, and Crimson teams almost always end up trouncing the Lions. Last year...