Word: wads
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Mailer couldn't help admiring the way the great Republican prime-time extravaganza was handled. The timing, the celebrities, Pat, and especially the Young Voters for the President, fascinated him. For him the YVP was as a mindless, well-scrubbed cheering section, in whose faces he could see the Wad...
...Wad is Mailer's term for the evil underside of Middle America, the money-conscious ugly population of bigots and haters. It is the Wad that can support the war in Vietnam, and it was the Wad that gathered in Miami in August to nominate its candidate for President...
...WHAT THE WAD wanted was a man who would make sure that everything was going to be OK. They agreed not to get in his way when he had to step across the law, and in return he agreed to watch out for their best interests. The ultimate development of the Godfather...
...Republicans dealt with the young by taking in only the smiling, agreeable children of the Wad, showing America how patriotic and respectful some kids could be, and simply ignoring the "radicals" of Flamingo Park. The police successfully diffused the demonstrations by arresting few and beating up practically no one. With the Republicans in town, Flamingo Park became nothing but a carnival, an adjunct to the convention skillfully portrayed by anxious-to-please newsmen as an orgy of disruption for the folks back home. Every obscenity hurled meant more votes from the Wad; every egg on the dress of a delegate...
Elsewhere he marvels at the way the Republicans filled the TV screen with nonevents, all the while knowing that "The Wad," as he calls the general public, will always watch something rather than nothing-and indeed be soothed by it. Mailer seems both fascinated by and resigned to the power of mass noncommunication. He even offers the possibility that Esso is changing its name to Exxon because it sounds like Nixon. This seems farfetched, although one recalls that 20 years ago Mr. Clean was created to resemble President Eisenhower...