Babbitry , auch: Babittry

Thoughtless celebrations of its evolution have settled into trade exhibitions and babbitry.

There were subtle jabs at well-established Babbitry.

Out of all this ingratiating Babbitry and boosterism would come acquaintances and the bits of information that could lead to windfall profits.

Although knee-jerk phrases appear ("fascist obliteration," the "affluent babbitry of the Middle West" that dominated the city for decades), they are infrequent.

Today the wild exuberance with which that novel ridiculed the grossness and absurdity of American greed and Babbitry seems somehow naive.

Others were outright dismissive, author Jim Harrison wrote that Wolfe's ideas were "the Babbitry of art in a new, white suit."

The film is hardly the definitive Jackie Mason vehicle, having been originally written to showcase Mr. Dangerfield's brash Babbitry.

YOU can, if you wish, dismiss the pageant as a silly exercise, or as Babbitry in a bathing suit, or as an offense to women everywhere.

First, some background: You may remember Mr. Pataki's foray into Babbitry after an October debate between the United States Senate candidates.

But Mr. Wallace's fiction did offer a judicious sprinkling of adultery, rape, kidnapping, old-fashioned romance, suspense, babbitry, alcoholism, intrigue and assorted examples of venality.

Such nuts-and-bolts concerns smack to them of Babbitry, and, besides, their students are nimble-witted enough to obtain what they need from bar review courses, tortuous affairs more akin to taxidermy than learning.

In any event, whoever wrote the Atlantic City entry showed no restraint in the book's social criticism of the resort, which it called "a carnival city," adding: "To some, it represents the concentrated Babbitry of America on parade."

I believe it is very presumptuous for The Long Island Voice to present itself as the great avant-garde vehicle that will save Nassau and Suffolk from the doldrums of suburban babbitry ["The Voice Finds Its Style Plays on the Island," March 7].