Word: causticity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...circumspect in victory. Says she: "I have been elected bishop of the church, not a symbol or a token." Her emphasis will be on the job that she has been called to do, Harris insists, not on her precedent-shattering election. However, two years ago, Harris observed with typically caustic humor that any woman who joined the Episcopal hierarchy would need "a high tolerance for indecisiveness, an inordinate amount of patience with unimaginative leadership . . . and an appetite for ambiguity." In the coming months, such qualities will surely be tested in Harris herself, and in the fractious Anglican Communion...
...moved to Colorado, married at 21 and had three children. While working as a cocktail waitress, she started appearing at Denver comedy clubs. After moving to Los Angeles in 1985, she became a regular at the Comedy Store and landed some TV guest shots, gaining a following with her caustic, straight- from-the-heartland comments on the trials of housewifehood...
...generations, pregnant women have dosed themselves with unpalatable, hazardous potions in desperate, largely unsuccessful efforts to rid their bodies of unwanted fetuses. Among the dubious household remedies: swallowing narcotics made from hempseed, douching with the caustic disinfectant potassium permanganate, and even quaffing gin laced with iron filings. Such medieval measures are now giving way to a modern alternative: drugs that can induce abortion. Approved in pill form abroad, they appear to have what their noxious predecessors lacked: safety and efficacy. They are not, however, lacking in controversy...
...Norte is not just a parable for immigrant visions crushed by reality. It is a caustic metaphor for Hispanic-American filmmakers lusting to conquer Hollywood. Years of slammed doors have tempered hope with skepticism, even when one smash movie has opened doors a crack. La Bamba, a low-budget bio-pic of Chicano Rock 'n' Roller Ritchie Valens, was last summer's surprise hit, earning $55 million at the North American box office. Maybe Hispanic film artists would prefer to believe in La Bamba's rags-to-riches story. But they know how even that film ends: with a fatal...
...letters, including suggestions that he run for President and pleas for advice on family, finance and foreign affairs. Now the chairman is back with a sequel, Talking Straight (Bantam Books; $21.95), in which he dispenses the folk wisdom his fans were asking for. He is by turns caustic, magnanimous and earthy but almost never bland...