Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...very telling of the objectivist cult-following that it should regard the poor and the unsuccessful (who are the brunt of their joke) as failures. In objectivists' eyes, the poor fail willingly because all people have and have enjoyed equal opportunity, have entered this world with equal freedoms to flex equal minds. They believe that every wealthy and successful individual is so because of his or her "productivity," that the uncreative and less intelligent and less talented should suffer for their fruitlessness, and ultimately, that our civil society should feel no obligation to them...
...Cult of Moral Grayness," Rand deconstructs the logic of those who assert life is more gray than black and white: "If there is no black and white, there can be no gray--since gray is merely a mixture of the two." How perfectly poetic! How superbly simplistic! (Rand must have been exempt from Lit. & Arts A.) Try mixing yellow, blue and red, my dear...
...fame today is the fossil of the huge notoriety it acquired as a puzzle-picture in 1913. It is lodged in history because it embodied the belief that the new, revolutionary work of art has to be scorned and stoned like a prophet by the uncomprehending crowd. In the cult of the problematic, as distinct from the enjoyable, Duchamp rapidly became a saint, and the Nude is one of his prime relics. So are his "readymades"--a snow shovel or a ceramic urinal designated as works of art, sardonic jokes that have been done seven-eighths to death by decades...
...ANGELES: Died: Richard Berry, composer of one of collegedom's most enduring anthems, "Louie, Louie." Berry, who sold his simple song for only $500 in 1956, saw it grow into a cult favorite when the Kingsmen recorded their famously incomprehensible version in 1963. It rose to number 2 on the Billboard charts that year, before being ousted by the Beatles. The muddled lyrics of the song can be blamed on the primitive studio conditions in which it was recorded; Kingsmen lead singer Jack Ely had to scream the words into a microphone suspended 12 feet above his head. Hardly...
...meetings in several U.S. cities, where followers were urged to contribute to the Clintons' defense fund. Some members gave directly; the Washington Post reported that others were told contributions would be made in their name. Trie's ties to the group are a mystery, but then so is the cult. Sect members, who worship a 46-year-old woman whose real name is Hue Thi Thanh Wallenstatter, are said to believe in, among other things, the curative powers of their master's bathwater, the Wall Street Journal reported...