Word: scoundrels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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PODHORETZ DROPS NAMES, and not always affectionately. He hates the politically nerveless and the overly cynical, but lands heaviest on the intellectual hypocrites, attacking, for example, Lillian Hellman, whose book Scoundrel Time defended Stalin and his crimes, while disgracefully comparing the plight of Eastern European dissidents to the bogus martyrdom of those who, under congressional questioning, evasively pleaded the fifth...
...Thomas Carlyle was an exception; he instructed his own biographer, James Anthony Froude, to put down the truth about him. But when he died and Froude did just that, telling how sour, self-centered and occasionally violent the great man really was, half of England denounced Froude as a scoundrel and a traitor. Biographies were popular in both Britain and America throughout the 19th century, but few modern readers could or would endure them. Speeches and letters were quoted at enormous length-a life of Lincoln ran to ten volumes. Authors were expected to remain discreetly behind the curtains, without...
...Please, no more letters to honor that scoundrel and rogue who frequently exhorted Boston voters to 'Vote early and often,' " replied Jean Rogers, languishing in Provincetown. Curley was no "scoundrel and rogue," sniped George Morrissey from Newton. And furthermore, "The true exhortation was 'Vote often and early for James Michael Curley...
WATCHING GOIN' SOUTH makes you think Burt Reynolds must have had something to do with it. The cutting one-liners are tossed off with a certain macho flair, the male lead is yet another in a series of adorable scoundrel types, and the woman is one more unfulfilled, sublimated prude who all too willingly gives herself up to the irresistible charms of a confirmed ne'er-do-well. The film, in fact, aspires to little more than giving the audience a good belly laugh every 15 minutes or so. Your funny bone is taken good care of, all right...
Director Peter Hyams' script does its best to exploit the latest fashions in paranoia. There are interwoven conspiracies and cover-ups; every U.S. Government official on view is a venal scoundrel. Hyams' cynical fantasies about the space program are an especially amusing treat. He suggests, with malicious wit, that NASA'S space walks could actually have taken place on Earth: indeed, he demonstrates that for the price of a video camera and a few buckets of sand, any American can take a giant step for mankind in the privacy of his own home...