Word: asking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bill Clinton is a canny player of political poker. In criticizing movies for their grossness, as he has in the wake of Littleton and other teen tragedies, Clinton is playing his Dan Quayle card. It's not the wrong card, but it is a low one. You can ask for movies to be gentler, a tiny bit more attentive to the power of the repeated image over the young. But after criticizing what's there, think about what's missing. Can we please have a little grandeur and depth in movies? Not of armies on parade or edifying soap operas...
...with your one-sided reporting about Kosovo. You ask, What were the alternatives to the bombing [KOSOVO CRISIS, May 17]? Well, only a few months back, the West could have warned Yugoslavia that it would not allow, much less condone, any further dismemberment of the country. It could have helped Yugoslavia on its path toward democracy and European integration. I suppose we are pounding Yugoslavia back to the Stone Age simply because Serb President Slobodan Milosevic allowed himself to be provoked by rebels...
...what you want me to be; I'm free to be what I want"), the poetry (his ability to compose rhymes on the run could very well qualify him as the first rapper) or the quips ("If Ali says a mosquito can pull a plow, don't ask how. Hitch him up!"). At the press conferences, the reporters were sullen. Ali would turn on them. "Why ain't you taking notice?" or "Why ain't you laughing...
Still, one can ask how so theatrical a preacher became central to the U.S. of the past half-century. Always an authentic revivalist, Graham has evaded both doctrine and denomination. He sounds not at all like a Fundamentalist, even though he affirms the fundamentals--the literal truth of the Bible: the virgin birth, atoning death and the bodily resurrection of Christ; the Second Coming; salvation purely through grace by faith and not works. Graham's most important book, Peace with God (1953), is light-years away from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, which is revered by Fundamentalists. Everything that is harsh...
...stirring has been the effect of the solemn-eyed, cheerful, moody, funny, self-critical, other-critical teenager on those who have read her story that it became a test of ethics to ask a journalist, If you had proof the diary was a fraud, would you expose it? The point was that there are some stories the world so needs to believe that it would be profane to impair their influence. All the same, the Book of Anne has inspired a panoply of responses--plays, movies, documentaries, biographies, a critical edition of the diary--all in the service of understanding...