Word: heroicizing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...area District 65 has by now amply demonstrated that it no longer is a fledging union with a purely self-serving axe to grind. Its battle is now seen by many workers in heroic dimension--pitted against an increasingly Goliath-like University, District 65 is regarded as something of a potential David...
Cabrera's pessimism and deadpan ironic tone cement these vignettes into a book. Whether he is describing some feat of unbelievable bravery, such as peasants armed only with machetes attacking a Spanish cavalry unit, or some remarkable complacency or quite ordinary cowardice, he always deflates heroic claims that men control their destinies. Battles are planned with elaborate strategy and won by blind chance. So many of these images are both horrible and accidentally funny that they finally detach the reader from any feeling but irony...
...times of plenty, but it has found them easiest to fire when times are hard. If blacks refuse to bear the brunt of the current depression, they become scapegoats for white workers unwilling to share it. That keeps the heat off employers and the upper class. Take away racism, "heroic" wars and pacification programs like welfare or unemployment compensation, and the corporate profit system has to admit it can't make room for everyone; then it must resort to outright repression, using techniques and technology developed since the sixties to cope with future uprisings...
...most interesting figures--Patty Hearst, Jimmy Hoffa, and Howard Hughes--remained largely out of view. It was a catastrophic year for the best and the brightest, as JFK and Doris Kearns emerged with blotted copybooks, though for different reasons. Attempts to create new heroes failed miserably, despite heroic efforts in the cases of Ruben "Hurricane" Carter and Joey "Kid Blast" Gallo. And some shady characters weathered the year better than might be expected. Idi Amin, Isabel Peron, Indira Gandhi, and Stephen S.J. Hall all cling tenaciously to office...
...Vineyard, Kennedy heading to Hyannisport and an emergency meeting of the New Frontier brain trust, where a statement explaining the affair was hammered out. On the night of July 25 Kennedy told a vast television audience a well-scripted tale of mental confusion and fear after the accident, heroic rescue attempts, and a half-crazed swim back to Edgartown. Most remained unconvinced he was telling the full story...