Word: charm
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Candidate Bush chastised Bill Clinton for turning Russian-American relations into a game of personal chemistry. That was forgotten when Bush first met Putin last month and gushed that he had looked into the former KGB man's eyes "to get a sense of his soul." Bush believes his charm and persuasiveness will move his pal Putin to let the U.S. do what it wants. As an adviser puts it, the Administration is going to "work it and work it and work it and work it" until Putin gives...
...violate the very myth of Jordan, the myth of absolute control. Babe Ruth, the 20th century's first star, was a gust of fat bravado and drunken talent, while Jordan ended the century by proving the elegance of resolve: Babe's pointing to the bleachers replaced by the charm of a backpedaling shoulder shrug. Jordan symbolized success by not sullying his brand with his politics, his opinion or a superstar personality. To be a Jordan fan was to be a fan of classiness and confidence. To come back when he knows that playing for the Wizards...
...Aaliyah's charm, however, is mystery. The young star loves to hint at private quirkiness. She says her apartment in Manhattan is littered with Egyptian objects: cat statues, Egyptian pictures, a dresser shaped like a pyramid. At the start of her career, she hid her eyes behind large dark glasses. Later on, she took to wearing her long dark hair swept in front of one eye, like '40s film star Veronica Lake. (These days she is letting both her eyes show...
Besides having a child-like charm, this style means also to be instantly absorbable. It turns comix images into their most basic signifiers. After all, how much visual information do we need to know we are seeing a horse or car? And in Porcellino's case, it perfectly reflects the almost Zen quality of his writing. At the end of "Mountain Song" a muskrat (scarcely more than an oval with a line at the back) slips into a pond. Wordlessly, Porcellino then draws several panels of vaguely abstract images that could be either details of the pond or even increasingly...
Through design or instinct, Roberts cannily feeds her goddess-next-door image. She ladles her charm onto David Letterman, and the cynic morphs into a swain. She was chattily charismatic picking up her laurels at the Golden Globes and the Oscars; if there were an award for Best Acceptance Speech, she'd win that...