Word: trivialities
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...expose the spy game. Le Carre's blatant symbolism, his clumsy equation of the declining British Empire with its near-broken Secret Service, borders on the embarrassing. The equation fails not, of course, because it isn't accurate, but because it is so obvious and, in the end, so trivial. The author would be well advised to leave the political profundity to the philosophers and sociologists, and stick to the gut-level dramatic dialogue that he knows best...
There is an arbitrary quality to Johns' recent motifs-the hatching and the painted flagstones. They seem hermetic and trivial, both at once. They lack the iconic force of the flags, maps, numbers and targets. No painter ever marked time more elegantly. But there can be no summing-up of a 47-year-old in midcareer. Johns is, at present, the Picasso of en-.ropy. But even that strange position commands respect, if not always allegiance or pleasure. -Robert Hughes
...Human Needs for two years past its current expiration date of December 31, 1977. Tomorrow the Rules Committee will vote on the resolution, after which it will (one hopes) go to the Senate floor for approval. Inasmuch as select committees generally need to be reauthorized periodically, this seems a trivial development. However, this past February the Senate and the leaders of the Nutrition Committee committed themselves to folding the Select Committee into the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. It is surprising, then, that any serious effort is being made now to revive the Nutrition Committee...
...data are not available to prove that it does not. If the uses of saccharin were associated with tangible benefits, as, for example, some suggest for diabetics, one might be willing to accept the risks that animal studies tell us might be involved. But many uses of saccharin are trivial and without tangible benefits. Why accept a risk unnecessarily in such circumstances...
...Lasky is often correct on the well-known major sins of past Presidents, he indiscriminately elevates every questionable act, no matter how trivial, to an impeachable offense. Thus Lasky portrays Kennedy's impulsive decision to cancel White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune, which has since ceased publication, as a serious presidential assault on the press. He rates in the same category L.B.J.'s use of Lawyer Clark Clifford, who pleaded with a few newspaper editors not to report Walter Jenkins' arrest for homosexual acts (Clifford asked that Jenkins be allowed quietly to quit...