Word: menckenism
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...popularizing scores of new words from G.I. to A-bomb and egghead. Richard Scammon's "unyoung, unpoor and unblack" description of the average American was quoted in TIME, and its reception encouraged him to co-author The Real Majority. We found ecdysiast, first minted by H.L. Mencken, a delightful way of describing Gypsy Rose Lee, and helped make it a part of the language. The title beatnik, originally bestowed on Bohemian writers in San Francisco, became a generic term in the pages of TIME. McCarthyism and Castroism first came into general use in the magazine, as did Kremlinologist, Sinologist...
...Satirists H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan published a book called The American Credo. It contained a chrestomathy of shibboleths, prejudices, common beliefs and unexamined truisms held sacred by millions-"That it snowed every Christmas down to fifteen years ago," for example, or "that oysters are a great aphrodisiac." The Credo badly needs updating. In 50 years, America has become a more divided land, and its favorite truisms are less firmly fixed. But a lot of cliché consensus can still be found. In the public interest, TIME herewith proposes a few articles of faith for a revised edition...
Mary Breasted left the battlefields of Anaheim with an ear-buzzing sense of overkill. Everybody was talking, but nobody was listening. It was just as if two tape recorders were shouting at each other. The futility of the polarized and polished dialogue made her recall the words of H.L. Mencken: "Did Luther convert Leo X? Did Grant convert Lee?" The missionaries were playing cannibals...
Loyal to his professional colleagues, Vandervoort believes that most doctors are likely to be baffled when women patients set their sights on them as men rather than as physicians. But his judgment of those who succumb to blandishments is harsh. He assigns them to a medical subspecies of H.L. Mencken's Boobus americanus. To the degree that a doctor surrenders to the fantasy of being irresistible, he becomes ineffective as a physician...
Quite a few advertising men apparently accept Mencken's waspish assessment. Though much current advertising is superior by any standards, there is an abundance of tasteless, exaggerated or misleading ads. Today's increasingly sophisticated consumer is exposed to 1,600 selling messages a day, and he feels abused or insulted by many. As a result, shoddy and deceptive advertising is the subject of growing debate inside and outside the profession...