Word: backseaters
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When Wasps thought of their duties as members of a group, the group they thought of was society as a whole. Families, social classes and their subunits took a backseat. Being realists, Wasps recognized that narrower loyalties existed, and James Madison built a constitutional theory on the balancing of "factions." But Wasps always viewed particularism with a certain distaste. Vendettas and blood feuds were considered the marks of yokels, while "special interest" has long been a political term of abuse...
...phases that Western classical music did in three, progressing from folk expression to avant-garde experimentation. Fox feels that jazz, like current classical music, sacrifices originality for technical perfection. He emphasized that "Jazz is about exploring," and that this element must be preserved. Theory and form should take a backseat to creativity, explained Fox, and he offered his paraphrase of Stravinsky as evidence: "Stravinsky said, `I like this chord...I dig this.'" Fox added, "You don't have to have a label on it to make it legitimate...
...buried my sister today," the old man sighs from the backseat. "She was a veteran of the war." The driver, Artyom Dobrovolsky, glances at the rearview mirror and nods. He has a talker. As he dodges the ubiquitous potholes and noses ahead of less intrepid drivers, Artyom settles into conversation. Like most Moscow taksisty, he doubles as paid listener and anonymous confessor. He is a collector of stories from passengers of all kinds, a street chronicler of life in a fractured society...
...taken to various relatives' places of work, showered with compensatory kindnesses. His grandfather did a spell as a night watchman at one of the pine-tree sawmills. He would take Billy with him, let him play in the mill until the boy was tired, then put him in the backseat of his Buick to sleep. "I remember climbing the mountain of sawdust, how it smelled on those spring and summer nights -- such a vivid memory...
Others had equally harrowing experiences. Reporter Sally Donnelly, emerging from a rally at a neighborhood church, had to be smuggled out by black colleagues and driven away lying on the backseat of a car to avoid clusters of young men positioned around intersections hurling rocks and setting fires. Photographer Roger Sandler, roaming through a newly burned-out section of the city's Crenshaw district, had the business end of a pistol suddenly thrust in his face by one of a gang of teenagers bristling with weapons. Just as he lowered his camera, certain that they would fire, they quickly jumped...