Word: crisp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...should fight to preserve. When the line is crossed, however, between exercising a right to speak and directly inciting violence, peace trumps speech. The harsh rhetoric of the anti-choice movement should be censored, but not by the government. From within the ranks of the anti-choicers, the crisp, clear voice of calm-headed good sense must rise above the angry, rash jeers of hatred...
Richie Arias is a societal malignancy, a weak, charming, tirelessly manipulative man who inspires thoughts of therapeutic homicide in almost everyone who knows him. We met him a couple of years ago in Richard North Patterson's crisp courtroom drama, Degree of Guilt. There he was a minor character, the shiftless, sponging husband of the heroine, attorney Terri Peralta. Since then Richie has metastasized, and in Patterson's new legal thriller, Eyes of a Child (Knopf; 590 pages; $25), his rottenness drives the action. His psychology is that of an exceedingly clever stalker, and after Terri moves out with their...
...cast is uniformly able. Stockard Channing, as the self-denying British agent Elizabeth Hapgood, does all she can, with her crisp high-heeled pacing, to delimit the boundaries of her role, but there's something a little frustratingly soft -- in the text -- at her center. As played by David Strathairn, Kerner is more convincing as a scientist than as a squelched lover; there's something slightly too predictable -- too projectable, as Kerner the mathematician might say -- about his twitchings and jerkings when sentiment gets the better...
This music sparkles with clean, crisp lines, but doesn't bite. Though Grisman and Rice chose many traditional tunes, they've failed to invest them with a sense of rootedness. The songs do not seem connected to their cultural traditions, be it Appalachian string music, Irish jug band music or African-American blues. Even when they play a great tune, as in the traditional "Wildwood Flower," the solos are surprisingly tame to the point of boredom...
...almost any important meeting at the White House. So when her husband sat down with top aides in the Cabinet Room to discuss his embattled presidency, it was a given that the First Lady would have a seat at the table. But instead of offering the brand of crisp analysis and shrewd advice she is known and admired for, the First Lady was quiet, listening while others did most of the talking. Afterward, one participant couldn't remember whether Hillary had said anything at all. As a friend and colleague put it, she was still "coming to grips" with...