Word: maudlinity
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Crystal says he is not Buddy, although he makes him so instantly recognizable in his Nipsey Russell loungewear and pinkie ring, in his scathing put-downs and maudlin sentimentality, that the character seems to come from the inside out. Crystal says he only wanted to show "the terrorist inside each of us, who can ruin things at any moment." But like many people for whom affection comes easily, Crystal may have felt driven to test his positives. "It was easy to like Harry ((in When Harry Met Sally . . .)) and Mitch ((the mid-life ad guy in City Slickers...
...blown up by volunteers. Delegates heard The Star-Spangled Banner sung so often by stars like Aretha Franklin and Marilyn Horne that they may actually know all the words by now. The whole thing was as Republican as a capital-gains-tax cut, threatening to become at times as maudlin as Nixon's Checkers speech and as corny as Reagan's Morning in America campaign...
...present- day Philippine politics and, as such, is well told in Impossible Dream, Sandra Burton's history-as-I-lived-it account of the assassination of Aquino's husband Benigno and its aftermath. As TIME's Hong Kong bureau chief from 1982 to 1986, Burton soaked up the Philippines' maudlin, heart-tugging, cutthroat, rumor-mad, pious, unethical spirit. Her book is not only the expected political thriller, full of intriguing Filipinos and meddling Americans, but a bizarre feudal drama set in a land where Sancho Panza, not Don Quixote, tilts at the monstrous windmills...
Perhaps Updike attracts more serious appelations because his tone is often so harsh, his attitude so scornful of those he writes about. But Tyler's unrelenting compassion for her characters is intense but not maudlin. We should not mistake her sweetness for light...
MORE THAN OCCASIONALLY the Weep-o-meter shoots past "melancholy" to "maudlin". In one scene the young Woody figure--actually a character named Joe--escapes from a spanking when news that a little girl has been trapped in a well prompts a gush of empathy and remorse from Joe's family. Hand me the Kleenex, please...