Word: trivial
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...political consistency could have made an odds-on bet that his Democratic honeymoon would not last forever. Sure enough, he soon began feuding with Richard Neuberger. In 1957 Neuberger voted for a civil rights bill that Morse had dismissed as meaningless. Later, Neuberger committed the sin of sponsoring a trivial bill to turn over some public lands to the town of Roseburg, Ore.-without consulting Wayne Morse. That did it. Morse killed the bill, which required unanimous Senate consent. There followed a truly remarkable exchange of letters, begun by Neuberger in an attempt at reconciliation and answered by Morse...
Even the University found trouble balancing the books, and debated asking for federal aid, a problem which has come up again more recently. The tutorial system was re-examined and intensified, and the House were fruitful topics for sustained interest in trivial problems, notably the subject of inter-House dining. House sports grew in organization, participation, and earnestness, and began to suggest an alternative to the looming professionalism of big-time football. Meanwhile, football relations with Princeton were renewed...
...Felix Frankfurter the case was trivial, and the court should not have wasted its time on it. Said Frankfurter, dissenting from the majority: "This is a case that should never have been here. It will set no precedents. It will guide no lawyers. It will guide no courts." Bothering with such cases can only work "inroads on the time available for due study and reflection of those classes of cases for the adjudication of which this court exists." Thus the Supreme Court cannot devote itself as it should to "expounding and stabilizing principles of law for the benefit...
Zane's novel is not particularly outstanding; but its deficiencies are less his than those of the movement and the life which he writes about. The paucity of thought and craftsmanship which mark the novels of Beatland (On The Road is the bible of this pagan country) betray the trivial superstructure which American beats have errected upon a set of basic and simple propositions about the society they reject and the values they seek to transcend. In short, the beat generation is a barren subject-matter, and the more one has to say about it, the more one becomes repetitious...
...strange world and some troubled people," the dust jacket proclaims, "written by a young man who knows them at first hand." But how does Zane know them? Does he care? Does he approve? Does he condemn? Indeed, for the reader, does it matter? Wyeth and Steiner ultimately appear trivial and absurd. A child, at least, grows up; but the down-and-outs in Easy Living are adults gone to seed. They are grown men and women romping in diapers, shouting to attract our attention, aware of our criticism, scornful of our values, yet forever concerned with what we think...