Word: mumbo
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...apprentice Casanovas. A kindly teacher of English who considers Browning sonnets more important than Browning machine guns is tormented by the boys until he loses his job, to the detriment of his love life. Bright Honor points out that education at Newtown is smothered under the pressure of military mumbo-jumbo, a fact of no importance to parents who send their boys there to get rid of them, or because they will not eat their spinach...
Most intelligent laymen regard the jargon of lawyers as an obvious trade trick, a professional pig-Latin calculated to obscure otherwise simple matters and impress clients with the indispensability of their services. Fortunately, most of their pompous verbal mumbo-jumbo is harmless tautology. But at least one legal usage- "and/or"-is dangerous nonsense...
Achilles Had a Heel (by Martin Flavin: Walter Hampden, producer) is a distressing piece of mumbo-jumbo showing Tragedian Hampden as a Negro elephant-keeper in a zoo. Mr. Hampden and the invisible elephant love each other for being big. strong, noble. When a high-yellow wench, urged on by a jealous monkey-keeper, saps Mr. Hampden's integrity, the elephant, outraged, knocks his friend down with a blast of dusty air. The monkey-keeper gets the elephant job. makes a mistake, is promptly killed...
...medicaler" with bitter resignation but he is overjoyed when she bears a boy who, he believes, will inherit the Hofnagel power. When the baby contracts diphtheria Hofnagel prevents his son-in-law from administering antitoxin by shooting him in the shoulder, kills the baby with his own mumbo-jumbo. These events are developed in a sharp atmosphere of authenticity, tautly directed by Arthur Beckhard, expert handler of family groups (Another Language). Good performances: William F. Schoeller as Hofnagel, Jules Epailly as a rival wizard, Victor Kilian as a slow-witted yokel...
...would seem nearer to the truth to assign Veblen's vitriol to clear eyes and a sharp critical talent. More than any other man of the twentieth century, Veblen pierced the syllogized "classical economics" with its ridiculous labor equations and its mumbo jumbo on the credit system. It is through no fault of his that these things persist in the colleges of the nation, for much of his energy was spent in attempting to force them out. Mr. Bates remarks that he was handicapped, in his later years, by a delusion of prophecy that made him see himself...