Word: wasps
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...book Of a Fire on the Moon, ostensibly about the Apollo 11 moon shot, Norman Mailer was really writing about Wasps (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Or so he indicated during an interview with Leticia Kent, published in the current Vogue. Hymenopterist Mailer, who has called Wasps "the most Faustian, barbaric, draconian, progress-oriented and root-destroying people on earth," has moved on to "some mysterious and half-spooky conclusions," notably that "the real mission of the Wasp in history was not, say, to create capitalism, or to disseminate Christianity into backward countries...
...mind of the Wasp bears more resemblance to the laser than the mind of any other ethnic group," said Mailer. "To wit, he can project himself 'extraordinary distances through a narrow path. He's disciplined, stoical, able to become the instrument of his own will, has extraordinary boldness and daring together with a resolute lack of imagination. He's profoundly nihilistic. And this nihilism found its perfect expression in the odyssey to the moon-because we went there without knowing why we went...
...Harvard was, of course, one of utter horror. But he had not only alienated the Jewish community. Paradoxically, his actions in the Memorial Church Crisis caused a permanent rift between him and exactly the one constituency he needed to establish a viable control over the university-the old WASP families which hold the balance of power in the university...
...former Italian Catholic. With poker face, Jenny attributes the crazy affair to the liberal atmosphere at Harvard-or Mother Leveller, as she is known to friends. Jenny always mentions her family's poverty with vague discomfort, as would any girl with so formidable a wardrobe. For proof positive to WASP America or her priest-ridden childhood, she wears a crucifix in bed. No wonder Ollie's parents tried to stop the marriage...
...MacGraw promises to become the closest thing to a movie star of the '40s. She calls her lover/husband "Preppie" about 900 times too often; she sometimes seems case-hardened enough to scratch a diamond. But she is genuinely touching when she wishes aloud that her name was Wendy Wasp. And she is in a part as actor-proof as Camille. When a Radcliffe girl chooses to die onscreen, the Academy Awards can be heard softly rustling like Kleenexes in the background...