75 Years Of Miscellany

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"Republicans had waited for years for the great day when the country would come to its senses and turn the Democrats out. [T]his week the day seemed surely at hand." --Nov. 1, 1948, from the last pre-Election Day issue covering the campaign between Harry S Truman and Thomas Dewey

"Recently, Peking has made it a point to proclaim its delight at the prospect of the U.S.'s depleting its resources in a major land war in Asia. That prospect may seem less pleasing today. Where the Communists almost had victory within their grasp last spring, the U.S. now bars the way and stands ready to repel any other attempted aggression. Unless Peking and Hanoi withdraw from South Vietnam--and lose face throughout Asia--it is the Communists themselves who risk being bogged in wars that they can neither afford nor end. Their blunder came as no surprise." --Jan. 7, 1966, from Man of the Year profile of General William Westmoreland

"Untold adventure awaits him. He is the man who will land on the moon, cure cancer and the common cold, lay out blight-proof, smog-free cities, enrich the underdeveloped world and, no doubt, write finis to poverty and war. With his skeptical yet humanistic outlook, his disdain for fanaticism and his scorn for the spurious, the Man of the Year suggests that he will infuse the future with a new sense of morality." --Jan. 6, 1967, from Man of the Year profile of the "25 and Under" generation

"The Washington Times last week lobbed a pre-emptive strike against Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, warning that his private life will be fair game if he decides to run for President. If the country loses the candidacy of one of the nation's most successful Governors to moral terrorism, the press may yet come to see that there is more to journalism than moving product, no matter how heated the competition." --Aug. 12, 1991, from an article on press coverage of politicians' private lives

A BERLITZ FOR SQUARES Readers baffled by hipster lingo, whether it be Hollywood tough-guy speak or Haight-Ashbury hippie cant, know they can count on TIME for a translation

"A 'beard,' in Hollywood parlance, is a man employed by a male star to accompany him when he appears in public with a woman not his wife. Sometimes female stars use them too. A 'hunker' is somebody kept on the payroll to know baseball scores, send out for coffee and strike matches on." --Aug. 29, 1955, from a footnote to a cover story on Frank Sinatra

"Jazz has unhappily splintered into hostile camps, musically and racially. The spirit and sound of each variety of jazz is carefully analyzed, isolated and pronounced a 'bag.' Within each bag, imitation of the 'daddy' spreads through the ranks like summer fires." --Feb. 28, 1964, from a cover story on Thelonious Monk

"[H]irsute, shoeless hippies huddled in doorways, smoking pot, 'rapping' (achieving rapport with random talk), or banging beer cans in time to ubiquitous jukebox rhythms. Last week the sidewalks and doorways were filling with new arrivals just off the bus and looking for a place to 'crash' (sleep). They scorn money--they call it 'bread.' They feel 'uptight' (tense and frightened) about many disparate things--from sex to the draft, college grades to thermonuclear war." --July 7, 1967, from a cover story on San Francisco's hippies

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