Word: deflecting
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Xiaomeng Tong's "Human Rights Hypocrisy" (signed piece, Apr. 5, 1995), raises too many issues for one letter to supply sufficient response. Yet typical of a Beijing party-line invective, albeit a soft-pedaled one, the editorial quietly intends to deflect the international issues at hand between the U.S. and China to matters of "internal affairs," both Chinese and American. Certainly, to point out the U.S.'s inequalities (which we can expect to be exacerbated in the fallout of the Newtonian Congress) is no panacea for China's woeful inability to understand democracy, and Tong's choice to ignore China...
Sheed too knows how to deflect fear with badinage. His denial of denial is especially inventive, and the account of his English boyhood is high spirited, considering that he was permanently hobbled by polio and had to trade in his cricket gear for braces and crutches. Yet catching an early bad break had an unexpected upside. "The period when I might have been learning to adjust to the word [handicapped]," Sheed writes, "was so packed with small accomplishments that it was impossible not to feel like one of the world's winners ever afterwards...
...could usurp his anti-Washington, outsider mantle, reminds anyone who'll listen that Wilson pledged to finish his full term as California's Governor, "and should do just that." Phil Gramm's aides point to inconsistencies in Wilson's record--"opportunistic wafflings," says Gramm strategist Charles Black. Wilson advisers deflect such shots with blithe confidence. "Big deal," says pollster Dick Dresner. "Clinton swore he'd serve his term [as Arkansas' Governor], and no one's record is totally coherent...
ELIZABETH HURLEY, known chiefly for standing near Briton du jour Hugh Grant in photogenic outfits, is the new face of Estee Lauder. Now she might be able to deflect attention from another part of her anatomy. Hurley wasn't overjoyed when Grant publicly described her breasts as "magnificent, the best pair in London." While she believes in a free press, Hurley says, "I'd often like to censor Hugh Grant...
...healthy tradition of culling its favorite sons and daughters from unexpected niches. Merrill attended Amherst College, but his education was interrupted by a year of military service in Europe in 1944. A mere World War, though, and the tumultuous love affairs he also endured, were hardly sufficient to deflect his sense of purpose. Year by year, with ferocious industry, he added to his glittering shelf of books...