Word: 20th
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Harris probably could have carried a conventional account of the founding of a bananas republic unaided. But Director Alex Cox and Writer Rudy Wurlitzer are helpful deadpan absurdists. They point up the parallels between 19th and 20th century imperialism with sly, casually dislocating anachronisms. Accompanied by a rock score, Coke bottles, North American magazines carrying cover stories about Walker's exploits, even a Marine helicopter all turn up at ! the strangest moments. At best one thinks of Brecht's presentational theater, at worst (not often) of Saturday Night Live. At all times one is glad to see the spirit...
Some of our best Presidents have been adulterers. The unfaithful husbands in modern times (so far as we know) were Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and John Kennedy--three of the 20th century's best presidents. Thomas Jefferson was reviled in his day for allegedly keeping a slave mistress. Cleveland was a tavern brawler who admitted to fathering an illegitimate child. Lincoln, although apparently faithful to his wife, hated his father so much that he didn't even show up at his funeral...
...road becomes a delta, flattening, spreading out, careening and jostling forward at 55 m.p.h. The trucks are shunted off to a side lane and traveling along, nose to tail, bumper to bumper, they look like . . . yes! . . . a train! Remember trains? Surely trains were more sensible than this, a 20th century folly, this stampede of steel roaring toward the Lincoln Tunnel...
...Iran-contra mess, the stock-market crash and the inability to pick a Supreme Court nominee capable of being confirmed by the Senate have threatened to add Ronald Reagan to the list of 20th century presidential failures. Reagan's earlier successes restored national confidence in the presidency. A reversal now would reduce the standing of America's institutions, at home and abroad, at a time when the country can least afford it. Is it too late for Reagan to salvage his place in history? Not necessarily...
...first, it was hard to tell whether rebel troops in northern and eastern Uganda favored the weapons technology of the 20th century or that of the Stone Age. While some insurgents fought government troops with Kalashnikov rifles, many others went into battle bare chested and armed with nothing more than sticks and rocks. These warriors were following the orders of a 27-year-old self-styled "priestess" known as Mama Alice, who was trying to overthrow the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni with an odd mixture of Christian theology and African witchcraft. Believers in her Holy Spirit Movement...