Word: blackout
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...news blackout is largely the work of Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoya, who took office in early 1986. Honduran officials have always been reluctant to admit that the contras launched attacks from Honduran soil, but Azcona has gone one step further by blocking access to camps on both sides of the border. Honduran soldiers guard the road from Las Trojes to the base inside Nicaragua, and the government has refused to issue passes to reporters. A few daring souls have sneaked into the camp by resorting to subterfuge or bush paths, but usually such ventures involve a grueling and dangerous...
Carol Burnett's childhood might have produced a tragedian instead of a comedian. In this autobiography disguised as a letter to her three daughters, she runs through a series of blackout sketches that are by turns sad, hilarious and grotesque. Burnett grew up in a shabby Hollywood apartment with her beloved maternal grandmother. Nanny used to tie a rolled Christian Science Monitor around her waist so her "insides wouldn't fall out." She took Carol to the movies; then, "when it was time to go home, we'd go to the bathroom, and she'd empty all the toilet paper...
...troubled by Ronald Reagan's position. "He won't even listen to the word mistake," related Bush. The President, he told the friend, had to make some kind of move. It was a rare lapse for the fastidious Vice President: even with close friends, he maintains a total blackout about his dealings with Reagan...
...quasi-Nietzschean idea that conquerors absolve themselves of sin by the very act of conquest. He repeatedly urges himself to be a Napoleon -- which, Lyubimov acknowledges, Soviet audiences often took to mean a Stalin. These philosophical monologues, however, are kept brief. Lyubimov relies heavily on ritual and brief blackout skits that verge on surreal slapstick; he creates a milieu more than he mounts a debate. Like a cinematic montage, the story jumps from Raskolnikov to his family, his destitute neighbors, a deranged friend caught in a suicidal religious ecstasy and, occasionally, the inquisitor who seeks to extract Raskolnikov's confession...
...spite of the continuing embargo. He assigned management of the deals to the CIA and instructed Casey to conceal the project from Congress. At the same time, Reagan ordered that intelligence traffic on the arms shipments be kept from the State Department and the Pentagon. While Shultz accepted the blackout as a way to distance his department from a dubious policy, Weinberger requested access to the intelligence on the grounds that he should know what U.S. weapons were being sold to the Iranians...