Word: bafflements
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some of the bafflement arises from a curious inability to come to terms with a failed policy, with America's greatest military defeat. But it is also due to the continuing attitude of the U.S. Government. Fifteen years after U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin slipped away in the predawn darkness of a collapsing Saigon, the U.S. has yet to establish diplomatic relations with the government of Vietnam. Washington continues to act as if Hanoi had sent its troops to invade Virginia instead of down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Since 1975, the U.S. has imposed a trade embargo against Vietnam that...
...Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is cleverly done. But the best part of this engaging novel is the diarist herself. Spunky, passionate within the grinding limitations imposed by her station in life, Mary observes her employer's deterioration with a mixture of bafflement and good common sense. Why is this privileged gent making his life so miserable? If Dr. Jekyll had simply listened to Mary, unpleasant Mr. Hyde would have been cajoled right out of existence...
...would-be actor, he began writing plays when a therapist suggested he compose an imaginary letter of forgiveness to his mother. Among his best works: The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, an evocation of the complex caste system in Cuba six decades ago, and Once Removed, which captures the bafflement and determination of a family uprooted by the Castro revolution and exiled in the U.S. "I was the first Hispanic playwright in America to write about upper- class people," says Machado. As a result, he believes, "I don't get performed much by Hispanic theaters. I find that odd -- they still...
...when it happens, it happens big. And there are earlier, subtler pleasures: the understated idealizing of the Gallaghers' homelife, the funny- horny touches in the sex scene. Douglas and Close are nicely cast, attractive opposites. His all-American-boy bafflement suggests a Gary Cooper stripped of moral authority and ill at ease in a grown-up dilemma. Her intimidating energy recalls the young Katharine Hepburn but with a voracious libido. And behind them both stands another more portly silhouette: the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. Dan is the basic Hitchcock protagonist, a fairly decent man in a horribly compromised position...
Nonetheless, this single-minded force is waging its campaign for social retrenchment at what may be a propitious time. Fundamentalists detect a widespread feeling in America of spiritual bafflement and dissatisfaction. Many commentators outside the movement agree. Sociologist Rodney Stark of the University of Washington, no Fundamentalist himself, thinks that the religious right makes quite accurate assessments. Antireligion and amorality have in fact been spreading in the public schools, he asserts, and "a majority of Americans are scandalized" by the apparent flouting of traditional values on television and in the press. Similarly, Michael Novak, the neoconservative Roman Catholic, says that...