Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...they remember him at all, most people think of Kaufman as the bashful foreign mechanic on the sitcom Taxi whose salutation "Tenk you veddy much" became a national catchphrase. But a small cult of hard-core fans reveres Kaufman as a performance artist who upended stand-up comedy to explore his inner child. He wrestled women for laughs, created a thuggish alter ego named Tony Clifton and never let on where the prankster stopped and the real person began. When he died of cancer in 1984, at 35, even close friends suspected a hoax...
More central and even more controversial was Gandhi's cult of celibacy. At 13, he dutifully married and came quickly to lust for his wife Kasturba. At 16 he left his dying father's side to make love to her. His father died that night, and Gandhi could never forgive himself the "double shame." He neglected and even humiliated Kasturba most of his life and only after her death realized she was "the warp and woof of my life." At 36, convinced that sex was the basis of all impulses that must be mastered if man was to reach Truth...
Playing consciously on the cult of the Virgin Mary, she drew devotion to herself, virgin mother of the nation. "This shall be for me sufficient," she told Parliament, "that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin." She was, in the end, married to England...
Elizabeth's way of escaping gender restrictions and defining herself as a legitimate ruler lay in consummate imagemaking. She stage-managed her own personality cult. She dressed to kill, glittering with jewels in wondrous costumes to bedazzle her subjects. She went on royal progresses--the equivalent of photo-ops--to show off and get to know her people. She had the common touch, able to rouse a crowd or charm a citizen. She had flattering portraits painted and copies widely distributed. She encouraged balladeers to pen propagandistic songs. Her marvelous mythmaking machinery cultivated a mystic bond with the English people...
...good reason to be worried. For the past few weeks, day after day, Russian state television has been accusing Luzhkov of a lurid array of crimes--from involvement in the murder of an American businessman to a connection with a Japanese cult, and, of course, massive venality. His chief of police has been fired, and reports are circulating that some of his top deputies will soon be indicted for corruption...