Word: defend
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Liman rather sympathetically led North into nearly conceding that his superiors had abandoned him when all the secrecy was punctured -- which pushed the Marine officer into the difficult spot of trying to avoid portraying his bosses as either a willful part of a cover-up or too meek to defend their policy convictions. North had his most arduous time trying to justify the creation of Casey's covert "slush fund" that not even the President need be told about. (Some of the proposed uses were for U.S.-Israeli operations that North explained in a closed session...
...Cohen, Hatch. Their questions, their demeanor and their quirks could be watched.They are now more recognizable than most of the "Seven Dwarfs" seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, who have largely been subjected to television's usual voice-over, snippety sound-bite techniques on the evening news. Of course, networks defend their sound bites by protesting how hard it is to condense all the news into 22 minutes; as serious journalists, they should consider dropping some of those cutesy sign- off feature stories that precede the anchorman's cheery "good night...
Society's interest in protecting this type of expression is of a wholly different, and lesser, magnitude than the interest in untrammeled political debate . . . Whether political oratory or philosophical discussion moves us to applaud or to despise what is said, every schoolchild can understand why our duty to defend the right to speak remains the same. But few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen's right to see "Specified Sexual Activities" exhibited in the theaters of our choice...
...over passionate issues such as slavery and workers' rights. In 1843 the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison termed the document a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell." Early in this century, historians like Charles Beard tried to brand its provisions the work of a privileged few seeking to defend their property. The document was not made, one Beard follower wrote, "by the kind of men whom we believe made it." But it was too late: Americans by that time had, for the most part, agreed to venerate the Constitution, if not always to read it, all the while squabbling...
...clock news. Hue might be Pittsburgh. Here, only death looks luscious: gunfire makes a gutted warehouse flare into brilliant orange, and the blood of strafed civilians waters the countryside, turning it into poppy fields. The drama is desaturated too. The soldiers have no ideals to defend, just their asses; the accompanying music is not Samuel Barber but inane party rock of the '60s like Wooly Bully and Surfin' Bird. In this second section the movie becomes a notebook of anecdotes, always compelling, but rarely propelling the story toward its climax. Unlike Oliver Stone's Platoon, with which it will unfortunately...