Word: squalidness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Comedian John Belushi's death last March, sensationalist headline followed sensationalist headline. Finally, it seemed, all the ugly details were out. The dissolute star had died from an injected overdose of heroin and cocaine-a "speedball."* Public interest wandered on to more seemly news. But now comes a squalid epilogue: Cathy Smith, 35, a sorry hanger-on who was apparently the last person to see Belushi alive, has claimed that she gave him numerous drug injections, including the fatal one. Smith, a Canadian, is in Toronto, and she has not been charged with any crime. Still, the police...
...kind of grandstanding Betty Crocker, but Schlafly and her supporters marshaled all the fear and uncertainty that trails every social revolution, trimmed it and turned it against the opposition. ERA would encourage everything from rampant homosexuality to unisex bathrooms, from women draftees in combat to women victims of some squalid unisex millennium. Cheap and scary, sure, but as they say about such quibbles in Hollywood, "Hey, it worked...
...refuge from the bombing. Four hundred refugees made their way into the abandoned Concorde Theater, where they slept on the concrete floor without blankets. There was no milk for their children, though the Red Cross had provided some canned food. Said a 90-year-old woman, gesturing at her squalid surroundings: "I am a Palestinian and look at what Palestinians are today-nothing but rubbish." Mustafa Kamal, 37, a baker from Damur, came to the theater with his five children. "As soon as the first bombs dropped, I knew we had to leave," he said. "But for the first time...
...returning home afer visiting our son who is a freshman at Harvard. While visiting his dorm I had occasion to use the women's rest room and was appalled by the squalid, if not filthy, condition of the facilities. The sinks were filled with hair and dried up toothpaste--there were empty plastic shampoo bottles etc, strewn on the floor. The showers seemed lined with scum. Were I a woman student at Harvard, I could not endure the daily assault on my sensibilities...
...Abandoned" seems a little strong to describe what we have done to excellence. But of course a note of elegy always haunts discussions of excellence and quality. It is human nature to imagine that our present reality is squalid, diminished, an ignominious comedown from better days when household appliances lasted and workers worked, and manners were exquisite and marriages endured, and wars were just, and honor mattered, and you could buy a decent tomato. The lament for vanished standards is an old art form: besieged gentility cringes, indignant and vulnerable, full of memories, before a present that behaves like Stanley...