Word: 1950s
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Since the 1950s and the era of Why Johnny Can't Read, Americans have worried about the quality of their schools. But this time around, the focus of that anxiety, even desperation, is not the teachers, the curriculum or the school budgets. Instead, public education itself, the very notion that government should run the schools, is under attack. Powerful figures, including President George Bush and his Education Secretary, Lamar Alexander, have begun to assail the public schools as a self-satisfied, self-protective monopoly that needs to feel the hot breath of free-market competition. They pose a radical alternative...
...childhood detail, has sparked a minor trend toward more sensitive, autobiographical sitcoms. One of the most widely anticipated comes from Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties), who has based his new series for CBS, Brooklyn Bridge, on his experiences growing up in an extended Jewish family in the 1950s. Judging from the pilot script (the show is still being finished), Brooklyn Bridge will have its share of TV sentiment but a good dose of ethnic authenticity as well...
Islamic bankers see a touch of hypocrisy in the West's condemnation of B.C.C.I. bookkeeping. They point out that British banks routinely did business with prominent Arabs without documentation after British lenders flocked to the Middle East in the 1950s and '60s. The region's experts also see little wrong in using front men to hide the real movers and shakers behind financial transactions. That could help explain why Middle Eastern investors allowed B.C.C.I. to use them as nominal owners -- or nominees -- when the bank secretly acquired control of Washington's First American Bankshares. Royal family members often use fronts...
OCEAN (Columbia) A somewhat autobiographical look at Jack Nicholson's days as a lifeguard in the late 1950s, to be produced by Penny Marshall. But how will Jack fit into those swim trunks...
...founded in the 1700s by three families. Two continued as lucrative merchants while the Sabahs were charged with protecting the state. Major decisions were a product of consultation. The merchants held the upper hand and set policy; the Sabahs executed it. When the oil began flowing seriously in the 1950s, the Sabahs were suddenly the wealthiest of all, and the power relationships inverted. A succession of farsighted emirs distributed billions of dollars to the populace, and Sabah-generated patronage is still central to the family's power. "These days," says a Kuwaiti minister, "the smart businessmen come...