Word: windbag
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...could not blow his nose without moralizing on conditions in the handkerchief industry." Though Orwell was a socialist, the metaphysical system underlying Marxian socialism meant nothing to him, and he had an empirical Englishman's distrust of other philosophical abstractions; to him, the existentialist Sartre was a windbag. But he also held an immense advantage over English intellectuals in politics who, by comparison, seem like dishonest children...
...wealthy, thanks to royalties derived from the Lerner-Loewe musical Camelot. He was also troubled, his biographer reports, by a hopeless and uncontrollable passion for a young boy. He visited Florence in 1963 and is recalled by some members of the British colony there as a boozy windbag who told his stories too many times. In 1964, only 57 but seeming old and trembling in his anatomies, he died on shipboard after a U.S. lecture tour. On his tombstone, he is described as an author "who from a troubled heart delighted others, loving and praising this life...
...resolution came in for some criticism because it gave every windbag south of the Rio Grande an excuse to fan the air. Since it only stated a known fact, though, there was hardly reason for the fuss. Considering the Communist subversion now going on in Peru, Venezuela and Colombia, the warning did not seem out of order. It also served as a sharp reminder that, despite U.S. pleas, the nations of Latin America have not yet put together a permanent body to cope with attempted Communist takeovers. Many of the loudest complainers last week were those who turn tail fastest...
Sadist of Clowns. Miller's books alternate between pornography and preachment, sex and soda water; every bed sooner or later seems exposed to an icy draft from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. He is a comical windbag, but unexpectedly the reader has the opportunity to see which part is comedy and which is windbag. The emphasis shifts away from sex in Plexus and Nexus. Without his fake phallus, Miller is a clown-the sadist of clowns...
Scott's superb sense of his audience and the self-satirical aspect of his humor not only save the senator from being a windbag, but enable him to establish an intimacy with his listeners. In small groups, he will expound on some subject for a while, suddenly realize that he is beginning to prattle, and punctuate his monologue with a quick self-deflating dig that endears him to his audience. Answering a question at one informal gathering, he waxed almost poetic at some length about the glories of the Senate, finishing with the words, "and there is no other group...