Word: swivet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Scott Fitzgerald, is a writer of great natural talent but, like Fitzgerald, disappoints in the end for the poverty of his general ideas and tawdriness of his notions of a good life. It is odd that both of these very American writers should go into such an un-American swivet as to who sits below whose salt. Yet Fitzgerald, in his delighted fellow-travels with the rich, usually managed to weave a kind of verbal magic that seems today beyond O'Hara's means. In fact, O'Hara's entire account of the "aristocratic" Joe Chapin...
...airing of Talbott's techniques with R.C.A. sent Capitol Hill Republicans into a swivet. Ohio's Republican Senator George Bender said expansively that Talbott is known "as the most cussingest man in Ohio-but aside from that I do not know of any other impropriety." There were other Republicans who thought that Talbott should be summarily fired; a Senate party caucus broke up in total disagreement about what should be done. Capitol Hill Democrats, meanwhile, were gloating quietly, smiling at Harold Talbott, while skillfully leading him-with substantial help from Talbott-to the chopping block...
...were normal over the last decade, the Eisenhower Administration's bill to extend and liberalize foreign trade would have had clear sailing in the U.S. Senate's Finance Committee. A clear majority of the committee has long favored freer trade. But this year, with businessmen in a swivet over revived competition from Europe and Japan (a West Virginian moaned that Japan will destroy the U.S. marblemaking industry), the pressures on the 15 committee members have been tremendous...
...there is one thing that sentimental Austrians like even better than coffee topped with whipped cream, it is an emperor. Last week, for the first time in years, a real emperor dropped in on Vienna, and the city was plunged into a swivet of what local newspapers called Kaiser-fieber (emperor fever). The real emperor: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah...
Conductor Leonard Bernstein was in a swivet. Traveling in Italy, he had agreed to conduct a regular performance of Milan's proud La Scala opera, a thing which no American had ever done before. He had five days in which to learn the score-Luigi Cherubini's Medea-but he had never conducted grand opera in his life and never even heard of Cherubini's Medea. To make things worse, he had a case of bronchitis. Finally, the score with which he had to work dated from 1797, and, like most old books, it gave off dust...