Word: beset
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though Mike is free of handicapping emotional problems now, he was once beset by self-doubts. The only child of a very poor Jewish family in Chelsea, Mass., he ran away at 17 from a mother who spoiled him and a father who was forceful but "kinda scary." He became, successively, a dishwasher, carnival worker, Army drill sergeant, and newspaper advertising manager and publisher. Then, one arm went dead. There was nothing physically wrong with it, as Mike learned from his doctors. "I was afraid I couldn't stand the pressure, and I didn't want to look...
...wealth and its enormous range of economic choices give Census Director Brown reason for optimism. "George Orwell was wrong," he says. "Everything I see indicates that we are going into 1985 in a country that is basically people-oriented, with strong individualism, a free market and a democratic society beset by many problems, but working them out in terms of human liberty and dignity...
...relative prosperity is testimony to an economic turnaround. Only 17 months ago, France was beset by inflation; it arose from the student-worker riots of 1968, after which a 15% wage increase was necessary to restore tranquillity. The danger of a runaway price-wage spiral and loss of confidence in the economy seemed so acute that Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing brought out every modern anti-inflationary weapon: a devaluation of the franc, tight credit controls, the highest interest rates in Europe, a temporary price freeze and a strict limit on wage increases...
Besides, Zanuck Jr. had proved to be no more than competent on the job. At a time when the industry is beset by changing public tastes, mere competence is not enough. The young president had his share of successes (Butch Cassidy, M*A*S*H, Patton). But he had his share of bombs too (Star!, Ché!, Dr. Dolittle). Most recently-some say at his father's insistence-he sank $23 million into Tora! Tora! Tora!, which has an uncertain financial future. He also raised a storm of public indignation by backing pop porn flicks, notably Myra Breckinridge, which...
...scenes could better reveal the painfully comic convulsions that beset oldfashioned, dead-serious liberalism in the age of the ripoff, the put-on, and the total acceptance of verbal overkill. Wolfe's Leonard Bernstein is neither a freak nor a fool. Following the sound old American principle of defending civil liberties, wherever threatened, he winds up with the Panthers in his drawing room. Where bail was concerned, their legal rights certainly were threatened. But how is a good Jewish liberal to take a group that cheerfully talks about destroying his society and is, at the very least, linked...