Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...opinion piece in the New York Times or Washington Post. "All op-ed pieces are really resumes," says Washington Attorney David Rubenstein, who read his share while serving as a policy adviser to the 1976 Carter campaign. Stuart Eizenstat, Jimmy Carter's former domestic policy adviser, is an earnest, respected economics expert. Yet when his name recently appeared as co-author of a Washington Post piece entitled "Defense Lessons for Democrats," it was enough to rub nerves. Scoffed a former Carter Administration colleague: "Is that a job application, or what...
Which is not at all the same as producing something suitable for Masterpiece Theater. That is what Director Charles Sturridge and Producer Derek Granger are good at. They worked on the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, a novel more in tune with the filmmakers' earnest approach. They are respectful, gently pruning and rearranging Waugh's plot to suit the imperatives of another medium. They have a nice taste in period decor, and they can tap the mannerly acting styles of Judi Dench, Alec Guinness, Anjelica Huston and Pip Torrens...
...beats the blues. Sadly perhaps, a presidential campaign should not be confused with adult education. Or to update an Ira Gershwin lyric, "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers, it is the upbeat message that conquers." Look what happened to the Cassandras with apocalyptic new ideas. Jack Kemp's earnest seminars on gold-bug economics went the way of Pete du Pont's Iowa lectures on the evils of farm subsidies. Bruce Babbitt's budgetary bravery proved that press puffery persuades few primary voters. Dick Gephardt's political stock soared only after he softened his overheated it's-midnight...
...latest battle of Manassas began in earnest last January when Hazel/ Peterson Co., the largest land developers in northern Virginia, joined Edward DeBartolo, the nation's biggest shopping-center developer, to propose the mall, complete with new highway intersections, commuter parking lots and high- rise office buildings. Down came a barrage of hostile fire from outraged Civil War buffs, including Actor Charlton Heston and former White House Spokesman Jody Powell, a descendant of nine Manassas veterans. Ground where 4,200 soldiers gave their lives, say the preservationists, should not be overwhelmed by noise, traffic and pollution from...
...mirror. The show skewers a host of familiar political types, from the tough-as-nails campaign manager (Pamela Reed), who fends off late-night calls from Joe Kennedy Jr., to the overzealous staff cameraman, who dogs Tanner's every step with his whirring minicam. The candidate, meanwhile, is an earnest but wimpy liberal who quotes Adlai Stevenson at environmental rallies and wilts slowly under a shower of political advice ("You really need to define yourself in relation to the other candidates"). It looks, sounds and feels like the real thing. But it's flagrantly fake -- and funny...