SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Paradigmatic Metaconsciousness Perhaps the best place in the country to brush up on the latest in jargon, the cutting edge of the buzzword scene, is the Conference on...
...And the neat distinction between duality and polarity was made by several participants, while causes were never mere causes but always root causes...
...New from high tech is calibrate in the political context, as in "We must calibrate the extent to which the Soviets are risk-averse...
...From the world of psychology, self-actualization and narcissistic are still chic...
...Experts relieve themselves of opinions on everything from the ever-timely question "Is God Punishing Us...
...On passage to "enGrousement," all the senators in favor thumped once, all opposed twice, and the single-thumpers carried...
...to "Zeus, Energy, and the Hairy Man Within...
...One expert, a Brit, was heard referring to "the LeCanean, Foucaultian gemeinschaft of it all," but he may have been experiencing an attack of temporal lobe epilepsy at the time...
...The whole time this woman was talking, you could tell Tammy was just dying to ask her something...
...From the world of politics, glasnost has already crept into non-Soviet contexts, as in "We need glasnost in state government...
...Bill Clements, who as chairman of the board of governors of SMU played a major role in Ponytailgate, continues to amuse and amaze in his new capacity as governor of Texas...
...He has denounced state legislators as a bunch of "thumping prairie chickens" who have caused the state's fiscal crisis by "big spending...
...The conference opened at 10 a.m...
...The most revolting coinage heard at the conference was problematize...
...OK, but the Highway Bill...
...I believe the greatest single moment in the history of PTL was the morning Tammy's guest was an armless woman who told how accepting Christ as her personal savior had changed her life...
...And in our nation's capital, renewed concern about President Reagan's mental health was provoked by his impassioned plea to recalcitrant Republican senators to support him on his veto of the Highway Bill...
...Evangelical eschatology caused some concern at the conference, too, as did insufficiently nuanced utopic visions...
...I stopped when I came across Tammy, whose guest that morning was the head of a Christian charm academy...
...The new word for the year is metaconsciousness...
...Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...All of the Third Worlders at the conference were concerned about "repudiating debt...
...SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Paradigmatic Metaconsciousness Perhaps the best place in the country to brush up on the latest in jargon, the cutting edge of the buzzword scene, is the Conference on World Affairs held annually at the University of Colorado...
...So Christian mascara was always of great concern to Tammy...
...They never welch, but sometimes they repudiate debt or even fall into the debt-repudiation mode...
...This brings to mind the gladsome tidings for all lovers of jargon that Alexander Haig, whose native tongue is Pentagonese, has announced he will run for the Republican Presidential nomination...
...When she wound up, Tammy reached out to touch her, on what would have been her arm if she'd had one, and said just that...
...Those of you who wish to brush up on your expertise should pay close attention here...
...The state Senate passed a resolution making the prairie chicken "the Official State Grouse...
...The conference covers the issues from soup to nuts and encourages promiscuous interdisciplinary mingling, so one is exposed to great varieties of gobbledygook...
...on a Monday and the first use of paradigm was at 10:37 a.m., followed by parameters at 10:42...
...In Texas, we say of women with Tammy's style, "Looks like she's been rode hard and put up wet...
...they only share with one another...
...Reconfiguring, as in "reconfiguring our cognitive maps," was also popular...
...I first became addicted to PTL one morning several years ago when I was flipping the dial at a Holiday Inn in Gallup, New Mexico...
...People in pop psych never talk...
...I will lay me down for to bleed a while, Then I'll rise and fight with you again...
...This so enraptured Tammy that her mascara often ran...
...Most had thought the crisis was caused not by reckless expenditures but by falling oil income...
...Regular watchers of PTL know that Tammy weeps when she is happy, and she was frequently happy on the program because people were always finding Jesus...
...She and Tammy were deep into a discussion of Christian makeup, a concept then new to me...
...for example, "If glasnost continues, the Soviets may be in a risk-averse mode...
...He quoted "Johnny Armstrong's Last Goodnight" to the members of his party: I'm a little wounded, but I am not slain...
...Mode is an interdisciplinary favorite...
...Since all good scandals need sex, the evolution of Ponygate into Ponytail-gate was applauded by connoisseurs...
...Slim pickings in Gallup...
...I don't actually know what it means, but it seems to be a cross between solid-state physics and Shirley MacLaine...
...While Haig was Secretary of State, he described his Caribbean policy as "a broadly based potpourri in the formulation mode...
...Tell me," she said, "I've just been dying to ask you, how do you put on your makeup...
...In the matter of Pearlygate, I want to share my own favorite moments from PTL, which I fear will never be the same now that Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker are gone...
...This is not the kind of thing you find in your normal state legislature...
...Truly touching...
...Political scientists are also fond of hierarchical and risk-averse...
...To cover the home front first, Pony-gate, the SMU football scandal, took on an erotic dimension with the allegation that SMU sorority girls had been paid $400 a weekend to sleep with high-school football recruits...
...Thus armed with a fresh supply of buzzwords, so indispensable to the professional commentator, I am prepared to take on recent developments in our assorted continuing national scandals...
Vol. 51 • June 1987 • No. 6
