Word: fooling
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When the public-address system blurted out, "Foul on Holstein," the Scottish reporter winced. To mispronounce the name of Willie Houliston (rhymes with fool us none), national hero and ace center-forward for Scotland, was as bad as manhandling the name of Joe DiMaggio. At halftime, the Scots had dribbled and passed rings around St. Louis' All-Stars and led, 3-0, but their hearts weren't really in it. The familiar air of tension and desperation, compounded with an occasional "Hampden roar" (a sustained Scottish cheer which becomes so engulfing that mikes have to be turned down...
With probably the biggest beef of all, Ed Wynn ("The Perfect Fool") argues that in 1913 he originated Milton's whole format of introducing all the acts and playing a buffoon in each of them. While displaying an old scrapbook of his jokes, Milton was recently asked to explain a page headed: "Ed Wynn Jokes." Said he: "Those are some jokes Ed Wynn once gave me." Says Wynn in Hollywood: "I never gave him any jokes, nor did I give him permission to steal my life's work...
...There is no finer spectacle," wrote Potter, "than the sight of the good Lifeman, so ignorant that he can scarcely spell the simplest word, making an expert look a fool in his own subject, or at any rate interrupting him in that stupefying flow, breaking that deadly one upness of the man who, say, has really been to Russia, has genuinely taken a course in psychiatry, or has written a book on something...
...scene seemed symbolic of Western man's hasty and confused exodus from China. But not all Westerners left. Many decided to stick it out with their Chinese friends. Said the wife of a U.S. businessman who stayed: "I feel like a cross between Florence Nightingale and a damn fool, but I'm staying...
...today who would be far better off if they brought their consciences to a confessional box . . . The very passivity ... is symbolic of the patient's irresponsibility, which the whole theory of Freud assumes. It is in striking contrast to the man who says, not 'Oh what a fool I have been,' but 'God, be merciful to me a sinner...