BAD (case-sensitive in this instance) is a critique of American society and global Americanization by Paul Fussell. "What's the difference between bad and BAD? Bad is something like dog-do on the sidewalk, or a failing grade, or a case of scarlet fever--something no one ever said was good. BAD is different. It is something phony, clumsy, witless, untalented, vacant, or boring that many Americans can be persuaded is genuine, graceful, bright, or fascinating. Lawrence Welk is a low example, George Bush a high. For a thing to be really BAD, it must exhibit elements of the pretentious, the overwrought, or the fraudulent. Bathroom faucets that cut your fingers are bad. If gold-plated, they are BAD. Dismal food is bad. Dismal food pretentiously served in a restaurant associated with the word gourmet is BAD. Being alert to this distinction is a large part of the fun of being alive today, in a moment teeming with raucously overvalued emptiness and trash." Fussell then proceeds to skewer

• BAD Advertising
• BAD Airlines
• BAD Airports
• BAD Architecture
• BAD Banks
• BAD Behavior
• BAD Beliefs
• BAD Books
• BAD Cities
• BAD Colleges and Universities, with an Addendum on BAD Academic Costume
• BAD Conversation
• BAD Engineering
• BAD Films
• BAD Food
• BAD Hotels
• BAD Ideas
• BAD Language
• BAD Magazines
• BAD Movie Actors and Other Players
• BAD Movies
• BAD Music
• BAD Naval Missile Firing
• BAD Newspapers
• BAD Objects, with an Excursus on Collectibles
• BAD People
• BAD Poetry
• BAD Public Sculpture
• BAD Restaurants
• BAD Signs
• BAD Television

and round it all out with a chapter called "The Dumbing of America" (which is also the subtitle of the book).

backward combatability = B = Bad and Wrong

BAD /B-A-D/ adj.

[IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is bogus because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See working as designed.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Bad (?), imp. of Bid.

Bade. [Obs.]

Dryden.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Bad (?), a. [Compar. Worse (?); superl. Worst (?). ] [Probably fr. AS. baeddel hermaphrodite; cf. baedling effeminate fellow.]

Wanting good qualities, whether physical or moral; injurious, hurtful, inconvenient, offensive, painful, unfavorable, or defective, either physically or morally; evil; vicious; wicked; -- the opposite of good; as a bad man; bad conduct; bad habits; bad soil; bad health; bad crop; bad news.

Sometimes used substantively.

The strong antipathy of good to bad.
Pope.

Syn. -- Pernicious; deleterious; noxious; baneful; injurious; hurtful; evil; vile; wretched; corrupt; wicked; vicious; imperfect.

 

© Webster 1913.