Word: dissenter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Both shows reflect the way dissent has become domesticated in America; what were radical antiwar views in the '60s are now mainstream TV attitudes. High- ranking officers and other authority figures are mostly buffoons, insensitive martinets or corrupt sleaze balls. Heroism, at least as the military tries to market it, is usually a sham; public relations is the name of the game. A lieutenant in Tour of Duty gets drunk in a bar and empties the place by wildly firing his gun. A few seconds later, a bomb explodes inside, and he is hailed as a hero. Notes a smarmy...
...DISSENT...
...component of the court's ruling was the requirement that all government distinctions based on race be subject to "strict scrutiny." This means that public-sector affirmative-action programs are valid only if they serve the "compelling state interest" of redressing "identified discrimination." Justice Thurgood Marshall, in a bitter dissent joined by Justices William Brennan and Harry Blackmun, called the decision "a deliberate and giant step backward in this court's affirmative-action jurisprudence...
...Feisty House Democratic Whip Tony Coelho tells newspeople after the first congressional leadership meeting with Bush, "Very harmonious. No dissent. This is the first day of the honeymoon, and it was very hopeful and exciting, just like a honeymoon." Question from the edge: "Come on, Congressman, when do you get tough?" Slow smile over the little scrapper's face and a glint in his bright, crafty eyes. "When he gets specific, we'll get tough. About budget time." Interpretation: if Coelho couldn't fight, he'd go back to California...
...terms of process, never before have candidates for the judiciary been so thoroughly screened. When President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, he never suspected how often he would disagree with his Chief Justice. The process now insures against such dissent. The political litmus test has been extended (though not entirely) to our "insulated" third branch of government...