Word: hapless
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last October, members of the Students for a Democratic Society's ultramilitant Weatherman faction battled Chicago police, smashed windows and beat up hapless passers-by in a futile attempt to disrupt the conspiracy trial. Last week a federal grand jury indicted twelve of their leaders for conspiring, and then actually crossing state lines, to perpetrate the bloody violence that stunned the city. Bringing them to trial will be no simple matter: most of them are in hiding...
...anyone epitomizes the new look in black humor, it is probably Flip Wilson; he seems to have solved the considerable problem of how to be black without being racial. Like Cosby, he tends to narrative rather than one-liners. His harridan housewife who swears to her hapless preacher husband, "The devil made me buy that dress!" may become one of the classic routines of American comedy. On a funkier level is Richard Pryor. Aside from his extensive repertory of anal and armpit gags, Pryor does such splendidly satirical routines as "It's a bat, it's a crow...
...honor in his first full season of N.H.L. play (he appeared in 13 games for the Montreal Canadiens last year) is roughly akin to a Little Leaguer's slapping a home run off Tom Seaver. The Black Hawks could not have survived with anything less. Last season the hapless Chicagoans had the most porous defense in the N.H.L.; this season, with the curly-haired, 190-lb. Esposito plugging the nets, they have been among the league leaders in defense. As of last week, Tony was the stingiest regular N.H.L. goalie, with an average of only 2.26 goals-against...
...Yardlings boast two undefeated grapplers-Tony DuBon at 167-177 and captain Richie Starr at 177-190. Two-thirds of the team have won more than half their matches. The hapless Elis will forfeit four matches and present such "little problems" that coach Bob Fehrs will not wrestle his four best...
Perhaps Malcolm X's most enduring legacy to black militancy was his lynx-eyed criticism of the hand-wringing but hapless efforts made by black and white liberals to wrest from the machinery of American democracy anything more than promises and paper shuffling. Extremist in many ways, Malcolm X was most effectively extreme in sheer impatience. In his view, as one of his "blue-eyed" fellow citizens once remarked in another connection, "Extremism in the cause of justice is no vice...