Word: hokum
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...thousand times." Why is he wearing a white suit? "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society." Wielding the satiric pinpoint that is sometimes more deadly than the sword, Twain proceeds to let the hot air out of do-gooders, religious humbugs and assorted hokum peddlers. To vary the pace, there are tall tales, a ghost story, an acted-out fragment from Huckleberry Finn. The humorist even prophesies his own death with the return of Halley's comet (1910): "The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they...
...McCoys, daguerreotypes of life on the farm, outrageously violate all soil-bank restrictions on hokum but provide some homely fun while they...
...missile warhead through the atmosphere without burning up with friction. One startling sequence: a blunt-nose staying intact during lab tests while a white-hot, pointed-nose disintegrated. Conquest's point: science and scientists can make fascinating fare without the support of capering cartoons or high-powered hokum...
Legend of the Lost (Batjac; United Artists) is filled with authentic Technicolor views of Libya, and packed with authentic Hollywood hokum. The movie stars Rossano Brazzi as a no-good do-gooder, Sophia Loren as a bad girl from Timbuktu, and John Wayne as the man who discovers something good about...
...were drawing him, I'd draw a tiny body and an enormous head." Kennedy is recognized as the Senate library's best customer, reads six to eight books a week, mostly on American history. No stem-winding orator ("Those guys who can make the rafters ring with hokum-well, I guess that's O.K., but it keeps me from being an effective political speaker"), Kennedy instead imparts a remarkable quality of shy, sensemaking sincerity. He is certainly the only member of the U.S. Congress who could-as he did-make a speech with his shirttail hanging...