Word: blunder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...candidate. Marchi, however, was unable to stay true to the pattern he had set for himself. First he made the mistake of calling Jacob Javits a "pompous, posturing ass"-which many Lindsay workers found doubly satisfying, since they were pleased to see Marchi pull such an obviously foolish blunder, and since secretly they may have agreed with Marchi's estimate. Marchi himself had to admit he had tarnished his image as "the Perry Como of politics." And then came M-Day with the Staten Islander revealing himself in no uncertain terms, accusing Lindsay of having stuck a dagger into...
...title of a much-cited article, James Thomson has asked, "How Could Vietnam Happen?" He gives several answers: by how many other men have given many more. Was Vietnam only the ghastly blunder of one man, Lyndon Johnson, an accidental war by an accidental President, and, if John Kennedy had lived, would 40,000 Americans and 400,000 Vietnamese have lived also? Or is Vietnam something more...
More disturbing than their arrogant naivete is the small intellectual distance they have travelled since 1965-Vietnam is still "unique," a "test of very little" and a "20-year blunder." It is shameful that non-experts like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn were the first to point out the actual situation in Asia. But the "experts" are still lost in the clouds, and we must question their vaunted expertise...
...certainly now know what many have suspected before, that Professors Thomson, Schwartz, Cohen, Hofheinz, Vogel, Woodside, and Fairbank subscribe to the "blunder theory" of American imperialism [letter of October 24, 1969]. What else does their letter contain? Nothing but unpleasant patronizing bluster and academic one-upmanship. For example...
Their outfielders grew sorely confused when baseballs flew their way; time after time, the balls landed safely between them. In the tenth inning of the fourth game, their pitcher hit a Met base runner on the wrist while trying to throw the ball to first. That blunder allowed the winning run to reach the plate and put the Orioles behind, three games to one. In the final game the Oriole pitcher and first baseman conspired to commit two errors on a single play (shades of Marvelous!) to permit the last, poetic Met run to score. The Oriole manager, a stocky...