Word: contrarian
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...could try to make the contrarian argument that the ghettoization of crude male programming on cable television represents some triumph for feminism, however minuscule. But what the trend really signals is a feverish effort on the part of cable enterprises to reach a segment of the population not yet served by its own self-identifying slice of not-very-good television entertainment...
...details or even hint at how he would get these big things done. ("Come fall, we'll be making a series of major proposals," he says.) For now, at least, people don't seem to mind. His call for reform has helped establish a beachhead in New Hampshire, a contrarian state famous for punishing front runners and lifting underdogs. Gore has the state's top 100 Democrats more or less locked up; after that, most folks are up for grabs. Some 400 have joined Bradley's New Hampshire campaign, and his events around the state draw full houses, though...
Like pro wrestling, this fight is most interesting for its colorful combatants, and it's hard to know whom to root for. Hitchens is a tweedy contrarian from the British upper classes, a page of Evelyn Waugh brought to Washington. His Oxonian socialism led him to bash Princess Diana after her death and demonize Mother Teresa in a scathing book. The sharp-elbowed Blumenthal made enemies as a rabidly pro-Clinton journalist, and even more as the Clintons' lofty--some would say supercilious--ambassador to the White House press corps. But the real question is Who's winning? Hitchens took...
...recent years Podhoretz has struck bystanders as dyspeptic and contentious, and in debate as single-minded as a dog with his teeth sunk into a mailman's calf. Mailer has said that in the old days Podhoretz was a merrier man. Perhaps years of contrarian outrage have grimmed down the merriness. But the admirable Podhoretz has always lived by the gospel according to George Orwell: "The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet to be fully alive...
...punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed. Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong...