Word: panderer
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...appeal and a tang of alcohol make so palatable for the public?a typical Broadway morsel?that was dished up last week in a Federal court in Manhattan. The protagonists were the Government (in the person of U. S. District Attorney Emory R. Buckner) and Earl Carroll, theatrical pander. The issue: to convict Mr. Carroll of perjury in sworn testimony he gave to two Grand Juries last winter when the Government investigated a Washington's Birthday party given by him in his theatre?a party at which, according to some of the 500-odd "nighthawks" present, Mr. Carroll had filled...
...must object to your loose and inexact use of the word "pander" in your issue of Sept. 21, in which you refer to "Thomas Cook & Son, and other panders of rubber-neckery...
...term "pander," as you should have recalled, is derived from the proper name "Pandarus." Need I add that Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare all represent Pandarus, a son of Lycaon and leader of the Lycians in the Trojan war, as an unmitigated pimp, who procured Cressida for the dissolute Troilus? To a scholarly mind your use of pander in place of "agent" and without the connotation of lasciviousness is intolerably careless. Thomas Cook & Son are no more panders than is a magazine such as TIME. Neither attains to the requisite taint of immorality...
Webster's New International Dictionary says that as a verb "pander" may mean "to cater," which is about the sense in which it was used in the passage cited. As a noun Webster says it may mean "an intermediary; an interagent," but adds that this meaning is "rare...
...Knopf who has befriended and encouraged many to whom smug society turned a deaf ear and an unseeing eye, they have started a new magazine, The American Mercury. While in the Smart Set, perhaps to keep a fire in the editorial office, they were forced at times to pander to the tastes of readers who demanded undisturbing fiction, in their newest venture with a publisher like Knopf behind them they need serve neither fiction nor soothing copy of any kind, but may scratch and sting to their heart's content...