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JEREMIADS SUCH AS these Newman makes against the state-of-the-union's language are as old as the day Babylonian scholars compiled a text on "Style and Form of Hieroglyphics." Any nabob with alert ears and open eyes can natter negativism about decadence in American, verbal or otherwise. More important than the fact of degeneracy are the reasons behind it. Newman does make a stab at why the American language has become so cheapened. While Watergate was making its contribution, he writes, "a different process has been under way in another sector, where respect for rules has been breaking...
...besides, they are unrewarding. A clear-eyed body stare can be misinterpreted. Sweeping the scene like a radar antenna is not a bad approach provided that the sweeper does not mind being pegged as slightly insane. A really sharp spectator will look the girl straight in the eye and natter on into the night about urban renewal, air pollution and go-go mutual funds. Sooner or later, he will bore her into looking away long enough for him to look down -and see through...
Laundry List. Johnson also made some logical points to rebut the natter-ings of those who have prejudged the South Vietnamese elections as fraudulent. "We ought not to be astonished," he observed in a White House talk, "that the nation, racked by a war of insurgency and beset by its neighbors to the north, has not already emerged, full-blown, as a perfect model of two-party democracy." But even this statement was probably too late to dispel the public's skepticism about the elections, however ill-founded...
...sometime university dons. Between them, they have produced 18 books, including six novels and four volumes of poetry; in collaboration, they have edited the science-fiction "Spectrum" anthologies. Now they have attempted a comic novel. Like many others, this one assumes that there is surefire hilarity when British characters natter away with upper-class accents on low-class subjects. Not so. This story, about a group of lecherous London husbands who organize the scholarly sounding Metropolitan Egyptological Society as a cover for some amorous prowling, is about as funny as King Tut's tomb. And just as lively...
Throughout most of history, no household of any substance woke, ate, played, lived or died without servants in attendance. Not so in the U.S. The fact is not just something for wives to natter about over the pink extension phone; most of them have stopped nattering about it long ago and accept it as a matter of course. Servantless living is so much a part of the American scene that a family with two cars in the garage, a kidney-shaped swimming pool, three TV sets, a $1,000 stereophonic unit, and a vacation cottage in the mountains...