Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 35-member body that includes the two superpowers, has met periodically since it produced the 1975 Helsinki agreement, which ratified postwar borders and set minimum human-rights standards. But a single country's veto blocks decisions there, making it an awkward vehicle for asserting U.S. leadership in Europe. The European Community, on its part, cannot accept the U.S. as a member. That leaves NATO, where the U.S. has long been first among equals, as the heavy lifter in Baker's refurbished Atlantic house. By encouraging the alliance to become the main forum...
...state inquiry impinges on press freedom and is politically awkward: registry-board members are appointed by the Governor. A better idea would be to shame media and "experts" into ending the practice. Says George Annas, professor of medical ethics at Boston University: "The board shouldn't regulate this. It calls for self-restraint on the part of journalists and professionals, and that is very hard...
...with the border Vopos tossing flowers and grinning like Father Christmas, the Berlin Wall has suddenly lost the cachet it once had for spy writers. For Le Carre the timing of the Wall's decline as a cold war symbol is only slightly awkward. His latest novel, The Russia House, fails, unsurprisingly, to anticipate the collapse of the East bloc, but it does deal credibly with the slipperiness of glasnost and the refusal of U.S. hard-liners to embrace perestroika. Deighton, on the other hand, is caught embarrassingly short. Spy Line, his new novel, puts him five books into...
...stylized bitchiness of Harling's writing requires a stage setting. Failing that, it requires a director willing to let his actors throw good lines away or overlap them in ways that work in the movie's naturalistic context. But Herbert Ross insists on theatricality. His editing even provides awkward little pauses for the audience to fill with laughter, just as if this were still a play. As a result, some very good performers (Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, Dolly Parton) function less as full-scale sorority sisters than as chorus members who elbow their way up front...
...Kirstie Alley.) The talk on Carson's Tonight show may be programmed and artificial, but at least it gives the illusion of a real conversation. Hall seems tied to preset questions and often appears disconnected and unresponsive. Too many comments elicit a blank "mmm-hmmm," followed by an awkward silence...