Word: wisecracked
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...author writes almost too unerringly clever dialogue. Everything is buried under the ubiquitous wisecrack-the ironic putdowns and self-putdowns by which Americans play tag with their terror of failure. For failure is finally what Ordinary People is about. It may be Guest's ultimate irony that the older brother's drowning and Conrad's attempted suicide are only symbols for spiritual death-for a thousand subtle methods of neglect and undernourishment by means of which loved ones kill and are killed within the family circle...
When Administration health officials begin lining up Americans for their flu shots next fall, joked Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington, "they might have 'em vote at the same time." Magnuson's wisecrack, made during hearings on President Ford's emergency request for $135 million to inoculate all Americans against a possible outbreak of swine influenza (TIME, April 5), was tacit recognition of the emerging controversy surrounding the proposal. Despite final congressional approval and the signing of the measure into law last week, some legislators and doctors are wondering out loud whether the flu program is merely...
...historian of art is bound to answer. Cubism was not about cubes, nor Fauvism about wild beasts. When in 1905 an affable critic looked round the Paris Salon d'Automne, which contained an Italianate bust surrounded by the paintings of Henri Matisse and his disciples, he made a wisecrack about "Donatella chez les fauves" (Donatello among the wild beasts), thus giving a short-lived movement a very durable and misleading label. Fauvism was worked out by a small group of artists over a span of three years; it was dead by 1907. It could coarsely be defined as what...
Public Putdown. The wisecrack was an extraordinary bit of prenegotiation banter and an embarrassingly public putdown of Kissinger. Still, after eight hours of bargaining with Brezhnev across a felt-topped table and another four hours of talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Kissinger left Moscow with something to show for his journey...
...Pythons' uniquely English nonsense is moot. Their comedy is crowded with jokes about British TV announcers and politicians; their best sketches are intimate parodies of the idiocies of British life. Moreover, their style is the opposite of hard-hitting American humor. The Pythons can hardly summon a wisecrack among them. However, Program Director Ron Devillier of KERA in Dallas knows what endears them to Americans: "They have a nice sense of sex." Says a Philadelphia insurance broker: "They're the only real people on television...