ShmoopTube

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If you can correctly answer this question, you get a gold star...

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Which words could fill in the blanks so that the sentence below makes sense?

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Today's American public might express blank at the religious commentary and sermons that

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filled many of the country's first newspapers, just as earlier Americans might have viewed

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modern journalism's preoccupation with crime, scandal, sports, and entertainment as blank.

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Alright. We're happy to see the phrase "just as" hanging out in the middle of this sentence.

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It gives us the big hint that the words in both blanks will have similar connotations.

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So we're looking for words that get across the idea that old-school and modern Americans

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would feel the same way about each other's newspapers.

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(B) and (C) go on the chopping block right away, because the two words have nothing to

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do with each other.

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(E) gives us antonyms, which are the exact opposites of what we're looking for.

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How about (A)? Is there any hope?

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Nah, not really.

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Sorry, but "intransigence" means an unwillingness to change, and "blasphemous" describes

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something that's sacrilegious or offensive. These words don't have similar connotations,

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so they have to go. Well, (D) is the only one left. Let's hope

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it works.

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Americans today might think it's "inappropriate" for newspapers to include sermons, while people

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back then likely would have been shocked by the content of our newspapers now.

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Yeah, that totally works. The answer is definitely (D).

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To be fair, there are plenty of people today who are also shocked by what they find in newspapers.

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