Word: prurient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...distinction between sexual and obscene material. What was sexual, the court ruled, was not necessarily obscene. The standard it laid down: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interests...
...Kennedy meritocracy, as seen through various purported documents pertaining to the career of Alan Casper '63, linguistics genius and Peace Corps soldier of fortune. Casper is very clever and very witty and not very deep, and Sokolov presents his case accordingly; Native Intelligence, then, is of vast prurient interest to Harvard students and, like its hero, a little too smart for its own good...
...myth turns on itself; as Braudy's Prince begins to metamorphose into a frog, she reaches out to other men for confidence and adventure, and to assert her independence. Becoming involved first with a long-haired, melancholic Cajun singer and later with a slick, prurient East Side music critic, she self-deceptively convinces herself that "momentary pleasure won't cause you or your husband later pain...
...happens and we don't lie, which is more than a lot of politicians can say. The fearful possibility is that they're going after newsmagazines because they did a good job this week." As Columnist William Buckley saw it, "The purpose of the editors was neither prurient nor inflammatory in the cover treatment. The function of newsmagazines is to vitiate ignorance. In that respect, both TIME and Newsweek passed the test...
Despite periodic brouhahas over rulings on pornography, courts rarely jail anyone for peddling or promoting smut. The last defendant of note to do any time was Ralph Ginzburg, who served eight months for the prurient promotion of his magazine Eros. Now, however, three prominent pornicators-an actress, a publisher and a reformed smut merchant-face the threat of prison...