Word: weirdos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Eating lots of broccoli. You know, it's not the weirdo cartoonist that warps. The real warped view is on TV every night. Sanitized reality. Our job is to unwarp as best we can by reflecting the truth back into your eyes. It's not warped that Opus ((the penguin)) gets a buttock implant. On the contrary, I think it's pretty trendy...
During two terms as Governor of California and two failed bids for the presidency, Jerry Brown, to some, symbolized visionary political leadership. To others, unmoved by his fascination with Buckminster Fuller's visions of the future and the small-is-beautiful theories of E.F. Schumacher, Brown was a weirdo they called "Governor Moonbeam." After losing a 1982 run for the Senate to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, he dropped out of politics and set off on the political equivalent of a penitent's sojourn in the desert. He went to Mexico to learn Spanish, studied Zen meditation in Japan...
...decided to go the Adventurous route and order squid, which was of course a mistake. Squid is sort of a standard weirdo; just strange enough to be repellent, but not actually exotic enough to warrant wading through...
...height of British eccentricity, for example, coincided with the height of British power, if only, perhaps, because Britain in its imperial heyday presented so strong a center from which to depart. Nowadays, with the empire gone and the center vanishing, Britain is more often associated with the maladjusted weirdo -- the orange-haired misfit or the soccer hooligan...
...other extreme, the relentless and ritualized normalcy of a society like Japan's -- there are only four psychiatrists in all of Tokyo -- can, to Western eyes, itself seem almost abnormal. Too few eccentrics can be as dangerous as too many weirdos. For in the end, eccentricity is a mark of confidence, accommodated best by a confident society, whereas weirdness inspires fear because it is a symptom of fear and uncertainty and rage. A society needs the eccentric as much as it needs a decorated frame for the portrait it fashions of itself; it needs the weirdo as much...