Word: charms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Over the years, Jackson's motives have been difficult to fathom. He works out his anxieties alone. He is a masterly manipulator and loves to turn people on and off. One minute he melts listeners with his charm, the next he withdraws. He describes himself as bicultural. He grew up on the black side of the tracks, but worked across town for whites. His language can change rapidly from moralizing preacher to street hustler. He lets no one too close. Most white political leaders have little confidence in his word. No matter what the brooding preacher promises...
...wait! It's Indiana James to the rescue! In Timothy Dalton's interpretation in The Living Daylights, one finds some of the lethal charm of Sean Connery, along with a touch of crabby Harrison Ford. This Bond is as fast on his feet as with his wits; an ironic scowl creases his face; he's battle ready yet war-weary. And in the age of AIDS, even Bond must bend to serial monogamy; this time, for reasons of plot and propriety, he's a one-gal guy. Dalton performed a lot of his own stunts, and he looks great...
...strange, thought Alice, how little nationality or civil status mattered in a heatwave." Remarks like that, the hallmark of Francoise Sagan's simple, wayward charm, occur often enough to make this slight tale worth a couple of summer hours. Maybe it should be read at night, out of doors with a flashlight, because it is essentially hocus-pocus about oversexed Resistance workers in the early days of the German Occupation. Alice and Jerome, both bright, attractive and world weary, have a glum affair going. Seeking a hideout for their efforts to help Jews, they descend on his friend Charles...
North charged up Capitol Hill and took the forum away from the politicians. He played over the heads of the joint congressional committee, aiming his passionate rhetoric and complex charm at the 50 million people watching on television, the real audience and jury at the proceedings. The obscure, middle-level NSC staff member -- said to be a "loose cannon," an aberrant zealot from the White House basement -- did not behave like a guilty character caught at misdeeds, like a raccoon startled by a flashlight in the middle of the night...
...Lieut. Colonel Oliver North spun out his story with a dazzling display of charm, guile and unbridled self-righteousness during his long-awaited appearance in the Iran-contra hearings, he portrayed himself as a dutiful junior officer, ever willing to "salute smartly and charge up the hill" at any order from his superiors. Yet the bemedaled Marine refused to fall on his sword and take full blame for the scandal that has wounded his Commander in Chief. Although he confessed candidly -- and defiantly -- to blatant lies and deceptions, North also threw what even he called "Ollie North's dragnet" over...