Word: joke
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...professors was a self-avowed Marxist. I'll never forget my initial excitement over the novelty of being taught by someone who espoused all the values I had been virtually innoculated against from birth. But what I first viewed almost as a joke became a lesson in tolerance and appreciation of intellectual diversity...
Until recently the press seized on every blooper as underscoring his lack of heft. A few published put-downs were inaccurate, including a joke reported as fact -- that he thought Latin is the language of Latin America. Still, Quayle commits enough miscues on his own to supply critics with ammunition. Addressing the United Negro College Fund, whose motto is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," he lost himself in a self-indicting verbal fog: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind. How true that...
...calling for stronger laws and punishments. They argue that juveniles should be prosecuted as adults and that prison sentences should be longer. "These kids are getting away with murder," declares Robert Contreras, a police detective in Los Angeles. "They are not afraid, have no respect for anything and joke that in jail they'll at least get three square meals a day." Syracuse's Goldstein surveyed 250 juvenile delinquents for their solutions to violence and found that they too favored harsher sentences. Many thought that jail was too "cushy...
...behavior patterns or situations that are liable to trigger hostile actions. For example, sexual offenders are advised to avoid baby-sitting. In the program operated by the Justice Resource Institute in Massachusetts, members concentrate on overcoming aggressive thinking patterns -- for instance, assuming that they are the butt of the joke whenever people are laughing...
...liners not only reflect but can even help define the national mood. "When you see Jay Leno consistently making fun of a politician and getting laughs, you know the politician's probably finished," says Torie Clarke, press secretary to Republican Senator John McCain and a well-known Washington joke broker. The onslaught of one-liners about John Tower's reported drinking and womanizing helped scuttle his nomination for Secretary of Defense. Relentless gags about the Exxon oil spill undoubtedly aggravated the company's public relations disaster and spurred pressure for White House action. Deposed Speaker Jim Wright was tougher...