Word: vile
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...infectious popularity of John F. Kennedy '40. His job was "to direct payments to black, Jewish, Irish, Polish and other newspapers and radio stations...to encourage the gazettes and stations toward editorial balance." What editorial balance is this? A careful weighing of opinions that ends in ambiguity, or a vile attempt to keep journalists from taking a side, making an endorsement...
...took part in the Harlem Renaissance of the '20s, Lawrence was also at an angle to them: he was not interested in the kind of idealized, fake-primitive images of blacks -- the Noble Negroes in Art Deco drag -- that others tended to produce as an antidote to the vile stereotypes with which white popular art had flooded the culture since Reconstruction. Nevertheless, he gained self-confidence from the Harlem cultural milieu -- in particular, from the art critic Alain Locke, a Harvard- trained aesthete who believed strongly in the possibility of an art created by blacks that could speak explicitly...
...Wasinger have leveled against homosexuality are not sophisticated, and don't pretend to be efforts to make life easier for gay men and lesbians. Their comments, instead, are recycled mantras of hate and intolerance: Mansfield calls gay love "imperfect and stunted and frustrated," while Wasinger agrees and adds "vile and detestable" to the list...
...pointless, then--and maybe even counterproductive--to refute their comments, as one might attempt to refute an argument. How does one debate an assertion that homosexuality is "shameful" and "vile"? Certainly not with logic--logic cannot refute epithets. The dialogue can only degenerate into a childish "is too-is not" sparring match. Debate devoid of reasoning cannot possibly enhance intellectual discussion at Harvard or contribute in any valuable way to John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas...
Neither, it seems, does Wasinger. Never known on this campus for his open mind, Wasinger contributed this comment to the debate: "Homosexuality is a vile and detestable lifestyle and I think that it is completely disgusting that two people could do that freely to each other...