Word: charming
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mother wit covers a multitude of crimes; a boyish charm can sell anything; vitality overwhelms prim moral compunctions. All three apply to Trainspotting, the Scottish comedy-horror show made for a Scots-thrifty $2.5 million. The wit is in the film's dialogue; it exhilarates even as it horrifies. The charm pours from Ewan McGregor's star-making turn as Renton. And the verve--that's director Danny Boyle's triumph...
Along with his philosophy of judicial restraint, Scalia boasts a resume bursting with brilliance (valedictorian at Georgetown, a Law Review editor at Harvard, esteemed law professor at the University of Chicago) and a reputation for gregariousness and charm. So in 1986 the Reagan Administration believed that the 50-year-old circuit court of appeals judge was the perfect candidate to lead a new conservative majority on the high court into the 21st century. That he was an Italian-American father of nine whose appointment would please an ethnic constituency was a bonus. At the time, Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone...
...facades of the White House and the Empire State Building. On Earth, an ensemble cast fleshes out the stereotypes (Harvey Fierstein, whiny gay man; Judd Hirsch, crusty old Jew; Vivica Fox, stripper with heart of gold), while the three male leads mine all available righteousness and comic charm. Wryness is a big tactic here; it keeps the story from going ballistic. In the late 1990s, you will learn, there is apparently a 24-hour McLaughlin Group channel. There's also a near monopoly of Fox and Star TV news networks. The networks are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp...
Elizabeth Dole's life is always on message. Her syrupy charm and perfect manners do exactly what charm and manners are meant to do: persuade people to like her but not let them get too close. Her persona artfully conceals what she prefers to be hidden, namely that she is an opportunistic political infighter who has skillfully maneuvered for every job she's ever had. She arrived in the capital as a Great Society Democrat, became an independent during the Nixon years and converted to the Republican Party when she married Bob Dole. (Bedfellows make strange politics.) Her ideological transformations...
...hobbies. Her 95-year-old mother is her best friend. She has little interest in cultural events. None in entertaining. "We don't have time to have little dinner parties," she says. Or the space. The Doles still live in the four-room, first-floor bachelor pad at the charm-free Watergate complex that he first moved into after his divorce. Decorating? Mrs. Dole allows that she did it using samples from a book...