Word: unwritten
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mask an aggressive and sometimes furious writer. Despite a distaste for self-revelation, White frequently boils over: he takes after fascists in the '40s, loyalty oaths in the '50s, school prayer in the '60s and commercialism in the '70s. But the author's unwritten motto is always Multum in parvo (much in little). He avoids issues like integration and Viet Nam; the sharpest attacks concern mistakes that are less global than verbal. When the Reader's Digest changes one of his sentences, for example, he fires off a note to the publisher announcing that...
...candidate who tries to appeal to Playboy readers on one hand (see following story) and to evangelicals on the other, who promises tax reform but says he does not know enough yet to provide details, who talks both to God and Rock Superstar Gregg Allman, violates all the unwritten political norms. By appealing to such differing constituencies, he has magnified the uncertainties about his character and positions. Those doubts could cost him an election that seemed to be his for the taking a couple of months...
...boondocks of the Cotton South, that stretch of rich soil spreading from Georgia west to the Mississippi River, every black knew one unwritten law: you did not mess with the county sheriff. Oldtime courthouse minstrels in Alabama still guffaw at the memory of P.C. ("Lummie") Jenkins, sheriff of Wilcox County from 1939 to 1971. "Old Lummie had blacks so scared," one such regular recalls, that "all he had to do was pass the word he wanted some nigger in his office in the morning. Sure enough, that nigger'd be there-or he'd fled the county...
Lasting peace will not be achieved until all factions accept long-overdue reforms that will change the unwritten "National Covenant" that gives the Christian minority a disproportionate share of economic and political power in Lebanon. Syria is certain to play an important role in drafting those reforms...
With decorum the unwritten law of the land, the acts so far have produced the first ripples of change. London's Sotheby's, the internationally famed art auction house, has named Libby Howie, 24, as the first female auctioneer in its 232-year history. Linette Simms, 43, black and the mother of six, is now tootling along as the first woman among 350 male London school-bus drivers after previously being turned down because of her sex. And in advertising, notices now solicit "secretaries" instead of "dolly birds...