Word: banisher
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...best kind of bright early summer's day spoiled by the worst kind of dark imaginings: Is it possible that in this season, otherwise so full of innocent promise, Hollywood executives banish all thought of us as audience -- discerning, judicious, culturally literate? Does the solstice induce in them some Kafkaesque mental process by which we are converted, for purposes of contemptuous calculation, into some lower life-form? Do moviegoers suddenly seem to them to be, say, a vast colony of ants mindlessly munching through forests of Roman numerals, unconcerned about the taste, good or bad, of anything placed...
ENVIRONMENT: An immodest proposal to banish smog...
...last days of a steamy summer, as pity runs thin, a backlash against beggars is smoldering across the country. Its chief spokesman is New York Mayor Ed Koch, who is urging people to help banish the panhandlers by refusing to give them anything. Koch avers that "many people who panhandle just don't want to work for a living." They are, he insists, addicts, alcoholics and con artists, and those who give them money are easy marks. Sympathetic people would do better to give to established charities, the mayor advises, to ensure that the money be used to help people...
Reagan's ability to overfly troubles of his own making on a magic carpet woven of his own illusions remains a wonderment. He has helped banish bad news from the political lexicon. "There are no bitter pills among Ronald Reagan's jelly beans," explains a durable adviser. But eight years of smile-button politics leave a heavy burden for those who would follow, Democrat or Republican. No matter how intractable the problems, the American people have come to expect can-do homilies from their President. Any honest talk about sacrifice or yielding self-interest to the common interest...
Before the presidential campaign goes ballistic, a modest piece of advice for George Bush and Michael Dukakis: Fire your pollsters, banish your gurus and spend a week in Crook County, the crystal ball of presidential politics. Since this isolated county was created in 1882 in sagebrush-strewn central Oregon, its inhabitants have successfully picked 26 consecutive winners, from Grover Cleveland to Ronald Reagan...