Word: appealing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Melville of the train wreck blamed progress itself. And so, come to think of it, did Melville's possible disciple in this line of thinking, the Unabomber, who was a moral train wreck in his own right. The complaint seems a little simple. It can appeal to a flintstone fundamentalism that argues that materialist secular humanism, with its seductive technological wealth and toys and vices, fosters a godless hubris. But no one except Melville's grandfather thinks Flight 800 fell from the sky because its passengers wanted to travel too fast...
...Brien understands the appeal of his story, its picaresque narrative spiked with trial and error, with mishap and misstep, with personal suffering and extraordinary triumph. He calls it his "rags-to-riches" tale, but having happily embarked on the riches phase, he politely wishes that everyone else would please just move on too. The decathlete is tired of what has become his 11th event, talking about his previous failings--the way he mysteriously flubbed the pole vault in the 1992 Olympic trials, thereby blowing his star turn in Barcelona; the way his college partying sometimes got the best...
...filming the role of the sad waif Estella in Great Expectations, due out next year. But if you think she is doomed to play only transatlantic prisses in genteel screen dramas, think again. "Gwynnie is very American," says Kloves, "but the interesting part of American--dark, dangerous. Her appeal is her mystery and unpredictability. It's what people liked about Steve McQueen." Hmmm. Maybe Paltrow can be the one-stop movie star of the next millennium: Grace Kelly and James Dean, in one glorious package...
...seem to fit neatly with the post-'60s outlook of conservatives who believe an overweening central government is like a great tree whose shadow does not allow civic engagement to grow underneath it. But Putnam's thesis, as Nicholas Lemann wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, also has had an appeal for liberals exhausted from their battles to keep federal money flowing into their programs. A revival of civic engagement, Lemann pointed out, doesn't require spending money or raising taxes, yet it satisfied the liberals' yearning for social activism. And it relieved both liberals and conservatives from having to focus...
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Bob Dole is on a crusade to widen the appeal of the Republican Party, and he doesn't care whose toes he steps on to get there. "Dole has calculated that he must move farther toward the center," says TIME's Jeffrey Birnbaum. "He is purposefully trying to upset the conservative base to appeal to the moderate middle and he thinks he can afford to do so." Dole has enraged the NRA by reneging on a pledge to repeal the assault weapons ban. The organization, which claims 3 million members, says it will now concentrate its efforts...