Word: cult
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...excitement and ceremony surrounding the symphony are one more example of the Mozart boom; not since Mahler became a cult figure in the 1960s has a composer been as popular. On Broadway, Peter Shaffer's hit play Amadeus recently won five Tony Awards. Mozart last year led all composers in the number of new listings in the Schwann record catalogue, and record companies are assiduously exploring the nooks and crannies of the composer's output in search of further repertory-the oratorio La Betulia Liberata, for example, or the opera Mitridate, Re di Ponto, both written when Mozart...
...reduce the influence of Mao Tse-tung, the party's Great Helmsman, who died in 1976. Although his power is still not supreme, Deng was able to shunt aside Mao's hand-picked successor to the chairmanship, Hua Guofeng, 61, who was accused of creating a "personality cult" around himself, committing "leftist errors" and opposing the policies advocated by Deng. Relegated to the positions of lowest-ranking Vice Chairman and junior membership in the Politburo, Hua was also obliged to resign as head of the Central Committee's Military Commission, which runs the army, a key post...
...Snowblind, a 1976 study of cocaine dealing that has become something of a cult book, Robert Sabbag wrote: "Cocaine, like motorcycles, machine guns and White House politics, is, among many things, a virility substitute. Its mere possession imparts status-cocaine equals money, and money equals power. And, as if in mute imitation of its symbolism, cocaine's presence in the blood, like no other drug, accounts for a feeling of confidence that is rare in the behavioral sink of post-industrial America...
...great portraits reveal "the very bones of life." He did not include, of course, workaday, signed publicity shots of notables (or hopefuls), the glossy eight-by-tens that decorate restaurants, offices and waiting rooms with ballpoint sincerity. Those bones are less signs of inner life than mementos of the cult of personality. What may be the country's first formal display of autographed pictures of famous folks is now on view at the venerable Boston Athenaeum in an exhibition titled "This Is My Favorite Photograph of Myself." The surprising result: a vibrant, affectionate show offering a smorgasbord of speculation...
With her usual authoritarian sweep, Author Ayn Rand strikes a basic blow for her consistent dogma of individualism. Though she is more a cult figure than a popular philosopher, her words mirror an attitude that is becoming more and more common in the U.S., particularly among public figures. Indeed, an increasing number of Americans seem to have concluded that the right to ego implies the duty to exercise it publicly. The result is something of a rout for the time-honored American taboo against tooting one's own horn. Today it is commonplace for Americans to come right...