Word: shtick
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What does it mean that one of the most outspoken critics of American gender stereotypes has come to embrace those stereotypes with sweet sincerity? For one thing, it means that the counter-culture shtick isn't selling anymore. We are back to the age of boy-bands, homogeneity and Gap uniform-like clothing. The hard-core rappers of the late '80s are gone--now you're more likely to hear rappers endorsing their favorite type of soft drink than saying, "Kill the pigs." The pre-teen girls that used to scream themselves hoarse at Hole concerts are now shrieking...
...rubber-faced shtick was unforgettable to generations of fans...
...culture he sees as saturated with irony. "The point of irony," he writes in the opening pages, "is a quiet refusal to believe in the depth of relationships, the sincerity of motivation, or the truth of speech--especially earnest speech." For Purdy, our culture is entrenched in a Seinfeldian shtick, an "endless joke...not exactly at anyone's expense, but rather at the expense of the idea that anyone might take the whole affair seriously...
...Behar, a co-host of The View, has written her first book, Joy Shtick...
...mode. Hart's religious strips are hard-core gospel. Last year Wiley's Dictionary, B.C.'s font of wacky definitions, featured "cross reference": no words, just three rags nailed to a cross, bearing biblical citations for Christ's suffering. The effect, for someone expecting the usual caveman shtick, is like finding a Communion wafer floating in the bowl with one's morning Cocoa Puffs...