Word: websterisms
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...nearly a century the French dictionary Larousse (a sort of Gallic Webster's) defined "Greek" as meaning, among other things, roué, fripon, escroc-1) rakehell, 2) swindler, 3) crook. For nearly a century the Greek government has bombarded the Quai d'Orsay with complaints, to no avail. That, said Larousse stiffly, is the way Frenchmen talk, and that is the way they must be reported...
Cartoonist Harold T. Webster doesn't own a television set, has never seen a Milton Berle show, and would rather play bridge than watch Faye Emerson, plunging neckline and all. Yet his once-a-week cartoon, The Unseen Audience, has made him one of the nation's best and best-known critics of radio & television...
...Mostly, Webster pictures the radio & TV audience at its moments of greatest strain: clubbed senseless by commercials, drowned in the soap-opera flood, lacerated by thrillers, held slack-jawed and limp before the endless, banal assault on ear and eye and mind. When his characters are caught with their sets off, they exhibit every nuance of the Walter Mitty syndrome: grandmothers speak to one another with the accents of private eyes; moppets dry-gulch their parents from behind the furniture; housewives confront "their startled husbands with all the teary grandeur of John's Other Wife...
From some of his readers, Webster draws blood instead of chuckles. An outraged network executive complained to the New York Herald Tribune, Webster's employer, that The Unseen Audience is undermining the confidence of the American public. Says Webster: "The burden of his letter was that he wanted me muzzled." Another wrote, more in sorrow than in anger, agreeing that the industry had its shortcomings and suggesting that Webster drop in some time and talk the whole thing over ("The burden of his letter was that the profits were so juicy they just couldn't help themselves...
...residents of 20 Walker Street, we were somewhat amazed to find the word "squalid" used in your editorial last Monday. Our living conditions are not "dirty through neglect" or "filthy." (Webster's definition of squalid). On the contrary, we are sure that we have some of the most attractive rooms the college has to offer. Some of them have been repainted and re-wallpapered this year. New carpeting has been put on the stairs. The entire exterior of the building has been repainted, and an improved telephone system is soon to be installed. Some of the emergency doubles here...