Word: briefings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...have come out of nowhere. Gorbachev replied with a smile that "in the Soviet Union, there are many places to hide." As late as 1978, he was well enough hidden that few Soviet citizens, let alone Americans, had ever heard his name. His biography until that point was brief: son of Stavropol peasants, law graduate of Moscow State University, holder of various regional Communist Party positions for 23 years. Much about the formative influences during his youth and early career remains obscure. It is not known, for example, whether he lived in Stavropol under the Nazi occupation...
Give John Fowles credit for bravery. A Maggot, his seventh work of fiction, is an unusual and consciously risky book. The title alone may discourage the curious (and give booksellers the willies). In a brief prologue, Fowles explains that he is using the word maggot in the obsolete sense of whim or quirk, but that won't help matters much. And what will readers make of such Fowlesian whims as building his plot around questions to which he never provides the answers? Or resting his conclusion on an assumed familiarity with the Shakers, that little-known sect of puritanical Protestants...
...theatrical release," says Jon Peisinger, president of Vestron Video. "More movies today are created simply on the basis of potential revenues from home video." Vestron was the distributor of The Warrior and the Sorceress, for example, a low-budget action epic starring David Carradine, which had only a brief theatrical run in a few cities, but has sold more than 50,000 cassettes...
...speeches and departmental policy, Meese has led an assault on activist judges. At the American Bar Association convention in July, he complained that "too many courts have become more policy planners than interpreters of the law." The same month, the Justice Department challenged the Supreme Court by filing a brief that proposed reversing the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision, which struck down most legal restrictions on abortion in 1973. "The textual, doctrinal and historical basis for Roe vs. Wade," stated the brief, "is so far flawed and . . . is a source of such instability in the law that this court should...
...compact art form, and somewhat unnatural. A person feels uncomfortable composing a little song of himself for the classifieds. The personal ad is like haiku of self-celebration, a brief solo played on one's own horn. Someone else should be saying these things. It is for others to pile up the extravagant adjectives ("sensitive, warm, witty, vibrant, successful, handsome, accomplished, incredibly beautiful, cerebral and sultry") while we stand demurely by. But someone has to do it. One competes for attention. One must advertise. One must chum the waters and bait the hook, and go trolling for love and laughter...