Word: o
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...story on America's violent youth remains in the magazine. The only element we lost was the arresting collage that Frances Jetter, an accomplished New York artist, was still finishing up at 2 o'clock Saturday morning. That's why, in a break with our tradition, we thought we'd show you the cover that almost made...
...many of the young criminals is that they show no remorse or conscience, at least initially. Youths brag about their exploits and shrug off victims' pain. A Chicago case in which four teenagers raped and killed a medical student was solved because of good police work and what Pat O'Brien, Cook County deputy state's attorney, describes as "the defendants' inability to keep their mouths shut" about the crime. "It was a badge," he explains. "It was something they talked about as if it gave them status within that group of guys." Youngsters offhandedly refer to innocent passersby caught...
...O'Rourke; Atlantic Monthly Press; 281 pages...
According to Balzac, "Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation." According to P.J. O'Rourke, "Manners are a way to screw people over without their knowing it." Although 150 years separate the master novelist from the Rolling Stone nihilist, their contempt for social artifice is identical. The difference, of course, is that one of them has a savage comic flair. The other one wrote in French...
Surrounded by sacred cows, O'Rourke lives on a diet of hamburger. He considers it bad form to criticize one society when, with very little effort, two can be skewered: "The same polite behavior that makes you a welcome guest in the drawing rooms of Kensington is equally appropriate among the Mud People of the fierce Orokaiva tribe of Papua New Guinea -- if you have a gun." Closer to home, he examines every appalling aspect of modern life. Under the heading of "Rebuffs," he notes that "at one time the 'cut direct' was delivered by looking right at a person...