Word: pollyannaish
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...times, Wilkins sounds like a Pollyannaish sitcom mom, regaling readers with the pleasures of life without TV. It might just be that many TV-liberated adults would fail to make profitable use of their new free hours and indeed find life unendurably dull without their daily electronic fix. Released from the video cocoon, children will not necessarily emerge as articulate and considerate, scoring perfect 800s on their SATs. In fact, television in small doses may enhance learning and understanding. A study conducted by the California state department of education revealed that although students who watched The Dukes of Hazzard scored...
Once the new Administration was in office, the happy talk continued. When the supply-side Reaganauts were preparing to unveil their economic plan last February, they used imaginative new computer models to project what would happen when their tax cuts took effect. The results were absurdly Pollyannaish. Growth in 1982 was going to surge to 7%, while inflation would fall...
Though the figures made gloomy reading, President Carter pressed ahead with his Pollyannaish forecast, telling accounting firm executives that recently lowered interest rates and a hoped-for drop in inflation by this summer mean that the nation has "turned the corner" on the economy. In fact, it looks as if U.S. business has turned the corner and come face-to-face with an unexpected precipice...
These problems, jarring as they are, are still essentially cosmetic. The real weakness of the novel is in its Pollyannaish attitude towards the real problems of men and women. Having decided that men are O.K., Brown includes a few of them in her book; all except the evil Rifes (a family of villainous munitions manufacturers) are unbelievably sensitive and peaceable types. Whenever anything goes wrong, Cora, like Grandpa Walton, gives us a salt-of-the-earth piece of wisdom and puts everything to rights. The men don't betray the women. The women don't betray each other. If someone...
...practical advantages. Starting out unruly, it never looks worse growing out, needs nothing more than a trim every four months. For women who feel Pollyannaish with short hair, the hank at the neck lends reassurance if not beauty. And for those who want to go simian but are slightly squeamish, there is always Sassoon's new way out: the Veil, with a long thin screen of hair completely covering the face. Blinking, obviously, is a nono...