Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Cybula nonetheless accepts the olive branch and brings most of his followers down from the mountain. Then culture shocks begin in earnest. A Jewish shoemaker arrives in the settlement, bearing strange tales of distant lands, the idea of one all-powerful God, and the methods of reading and writing. A Christian missionary appears. The women, tired of being routinely raped and brutalized, stage a revolution. Cybula, wearied by so much violence and change, pledges allegiance to Shmiercz, the god of death...
Lighten up, everybody. This election is well within the normal range of modern American presidential contests -- which is to say, it is fairly ^ earnest, notably clean and even informative, if you know what to look for. A glance at the record dispels the notion that this election is peculiarly dirty or dishonest. Only eight years ago, the election was marred by loose, guilt- by-association swipes involving the Ku Klux Klan. The farther back you look, the worse it gets. In the Democratic-Republican propaganda of 1800, the Federalists were alleged to be cryptoroyalists and Anglomaniacs; the Federalists, in their...
...jokingly call the "rough and macho" look. They wear T shirts and blue jeans. At times they may seem a bit cocky, inviting viewers to send in such oddities as leaden macaroni mixes or bread loaves containing glass chips for their "museum of shoddy goods." But they are as earnest as Molchanov in exploring the boundaries of glasnost...
...Dukakis, the Wake Forest wordfest may have been the moment he badly needed. Given his limited emotional range and his earnest, smartest-boy-in- the-class presentation, his command of the debate was his strongest performance since the Atlanta Convention. If the exchange, watched by 100 million viewers, does not help him rebound in the polls, his political outlook is cloudy, since he is unlikely to surpass this performance again. For Bush, with a well-orchestrated campaign and far less to lose, it may be enough that he survived without permanent damage. If the Vice President made no new converts...
...Bizarre Is Better. With the debate panel composed entirely of reporters, it will be easy to anticipate most of their earnest questions. Do you really think Dukakis would be unprepared for a query on balancing the budget, or Bush blind-sided by the Iran-contra affair? But despite the practice sessions, one or two out-of-nowhere questions may slip through the rehearsal radar. Both candidates might be flummoxed by a panelist who simply asks them to justify their lifelong aversion to reading novels. You can probably tell when to be alert; neither Bush nor Dukakis is a good enough...