Word: plebeians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even if it were bound in rich Corinthian leather with a silken page marker, my Daily Planner would still not be able to transcend its plebeian origins. All through 1988, I fell behind in the race to the top because my desk diary lacked the fat glossary of practical information that people like Michael Korda take for granted. It is galling to admit that I have at my fingertips neither the international dialing code for Abu Dhabi nor an up-to-date list of bank holidays in Kuala Lumpur. Even worse, I am forced to rise from my swivel chair...
...most familiar and plebeian, take-out means pizza, chicken or burgers from fast-food chains, or a Chinese or Mexican meal -- or, of course, frozen or vacuum-bagged fodder from the supermarket. But these days there is a huge variety of fresh take-out food for the weary shopper. Many supermarkets offer wide menus that include not only kaleidoscopic salad bars but also many tony dishes just cooked in-house. The newly spruced-up Rice Epicurean Market in Houston offers roasted Cornish hens and beef Wellington, and it will steam lobsters to order as a customer goes about other shopping...
...Pont's ambitions are again being met with incredulity. Surely, when the former Republican Governor of Delaware called a press conference last September in the Hotel du Pont and announced that he was running for President, he had to be kidding. When even the urbane Robert Dole contrasts his plebeian Kansas roots with the preppie background of the front runner, George Bush, a du Pont of Delaware hasn't got a chance. What skeptics do not understand is that, in his own mind, Pete du Pont is a self-made man, one who rebelled against his family tradition by going...
...came next to a letter from some plebeian staff member at Late Night with David Letterman. Most of it was a typewritten form letter, with the usual blank spaces for personalization--like "Dear blank", "thank you for your interest blank", "thanks for your time blank", and "now get lost blank"--except for the handwritten note at the end of the letter, which read "as a result of your application Mr. Blank, we have decided to stop hiring graduates of the Harvard Lampoon until your publication can show that it is capable of producing people who are both funny...
Almost immediately, however, the intellectuals' appreciation of some pop began to lose its prickly ironic edge. Robert Venturi, the father of architectural postmodernism, was not joking in Learning From Las Vegas (1972), his analysis-cum-celebration of neon, billboards and America's plebeian pop architecture. Soon the creators of kitsch were sophisticated enough to make fun of themselves even as they were creating new kitsch. The producers of TV's Batman (1966-68) played up the primary-color silliness for camp effect. "Charlie's Angels was great camp," says the show's co-producer, Aaron Spelling, "and the audience accepted...