Word: yorkerism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Harold Ross once defiantly accepted the description of his New Yorker magazine as an "adult comic book." This was a less-than-just verdict on the magazine that caused or charted wide changes in American humor, fiction and reporting, but it was quite in keeping with the arrogant character of Editor Ross to accept...
...years he made The New Yorker a synonym for urbanity, but he himself remained a bawling, rough-cut outlander from Aspen, Colo. A catty old friend, Alexander Woollcott, once described him as looking like "a dishonest Abe Lincoln." Rumpled, wild-haired and irascible, Ross talked in an ear-splitting voice, a combination of rasp and quack. He often expressed himself in skid-row profanity, or by mere grunts or gap-toothed grins. He had the energy of a bull, and a bull-like charm. Though he often sounded as crass as a cymbal, he had an amazing sensitivity for words...
Begun in 1925, The New Yorker went shakily on for three years. Fleischmann poured in $550,000. Ross furiously hired & fired, cajoled and cursed, trying to get the kind of magazine he wanted. In the first year and a half alone, about 100 staffers were fired, many with a muttered apology from Ross: "We need geniuses here." Gradually Ross found what he needed: James Thurber, E. B. White, Ogden Nash, John O'Hara, S. J. Perelman, Peter Arno, Helen Hokinson, 0. Soglow...
...such was Larry Knohl, a New Yorker convicted of embezzlement, who bought an airplane from a Caudle crony for $30,000. Because he got Knohl and the airplane owner together, Caudle collected a $5,000 commission on the deal. Knohl at the time was an "investigator" for two shady New York used-machinery dealers who had evaded more than $200,000 in taxes. It also happened that the case against them was delayed time & again by Caudle's office. "But I want to say this," said Caudle, "that when this commission was paid to me, that Mr. Knohl...
...Yorker reprint shows that the speeches contained almost the same wording. The reprint of Malott's address begins, "Emerson ... best stated the mood of America, at its youthful best, when he asked..." The reprint of Taylor's speech beings. "It is Emerson who states the mood of America, at its youthful best, when he asks...