Word: pablum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chaos spilled into the open as Reno prepared her decision on the White House phone calls. Arguing on one side was Radek, who advised against an outside counsel. On the other was LaBella, who said Radek's legal reasoning amounted to "pablum." Last Tuesday, before her announcement, Reno tried some shuttle diplomacy. She took a hard-to-miss walk across Pennsylvania Avenue to FBI headquarters, both to consult Freeh and to be seen consulting him. And Reno was careful to say a few hours later that the investigation proceeds. Just where it will lead has a lot to do with...
THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY. The bachelor trio (Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson) of the 1987 box-office champ Three Men and a Baby are now in charge of a six-year-old. The jokes and plot lines are way older, and everyone plays breathlessly cute. Pablum for the masses: it'll make zillions...
Which gets to perhaps the central fact about today's excess of gossip and celebrity journalism: it is contemptuous of readers and viewers. It says they are incapable of dealing with real news and that they must be fed Pablum and given the illusion that they are vicariously participating in important stuff. It is also about class: a nouveau celebrity class applauded less for achievement than for the mere acquisition of money or the act of becoming famous. I suspect that the pre-eminence of this type of gossip and celebrity journalism is not unrelated to the private frustrations...