Word: corrupts
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While the assumptions underlying Gay's 1728 ballad-opera--that human nature is universally corrupt, that greed, vice and pettiness are not limited to any one social class--are as valid as ever, much of the play's humor derives from specific references to 18th century mores that are necessarily dated. To be sure, high class ladies still affect airs and politicians are still crooks, but we no longer comprehend Gay's jabs at Walpole and his ministers, nor do we have as much patience with the constant appellation of every woman as "hussy" or "slut". Not, for that matter...
THEY FLED FROM BABYLON, from an England corrupt and doomed, to the beneficent shores of the Promised Land, where they would found their "city upon a hill." Guilty about deserting the cause, the Puritans aboard the Arbella self-righteously sought their justification in the hopeless depravity of their English brethren. If the short-lived blossoming of Babylon--the successful Puritan Revolution--undercut that justification, the dread finality of the Restoration left the New England Congregationalists even more anxious and alone, involving them in a desperate search for a meaning to their "errand into the wilderness...
...essay "Errand into the Wilderness," Miller emphasized the discontinuity between the limited optimism of the first generation Puritans, who hoped their New World settlement would serve as a model for a corrupt Europe, and the insecurity of later generations, who saw their role preempted and then rendered irrelevant by events in England...
...power. Without it there can be no decency." There is precious little decency in Matt's struggle for power. He steals a mistress away from the mayor, then grabs for his job. But old Mayor Quinn (Ken Costigan) turns out to be as wily as he is corrupt, and he finally kills Matt's political chances...
...same for rape and sadomasochism, both now part of the usual repertoire of film and printed porn? Writer Irving Kristol complains porn is considered harmless "by the very same people who seem convinced that advertisements in magazines or displays of violence on television do indeed have the power to corrupt...