Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...charmed life of Bill Clinton, when things have been going a little too smoothly for a little too long, the fates decide to thicken the plot. The Oxford-bound scholar comes up 1-A in the draft, the boy Governor gets tossed out by Arkansas voters, the earnest presidential candidate morphs into a skirt-chasing tabloid cartoon--and Clinton has to run harder and smarter to catch up with his dreams. Which is why some of the President's closest advisers have been anxiously peering beyond his gaudy poll numbers to the next, and inevitable, setback...
...faster than a beverage cart down the cramped aisle of a passenger airplane. Faith, Michael's first solo album, was appealing partly because he seemed to be working so hard to entertain us--songs like Hard Day featured sweaty, muscular dance rhythms; ballads like One More Try had amusingly earnest vocals. Michael's new songs are too concerned with seriousness and maturity to break a sweat. In his attempt to make music that's restrained, adult and timeless, he's instead crafted songs that seem exhausted and out of date. Listeners looking for laid-back pop-soul that smolders, intrigues...
...most members of the Patriot movement, engineered the meetings after other intermediaries, including right-wing activist James "Bo" Gritz, had failed to end a standoff that has stretched in to its eighth week. Dawson says that neither Gritz nor Duke were persuaded that the Freemen were negotiating in earnest. For the Freemen, there may be no incentive to give up peacefully, Dawson notes. Most members of the group are under indictment for fraud and for threatening law enforcement officials. "I think they want to make history; to come out in a blaze of glory," says Dawson. "They have everything...
...TIME TO KILL (July 12). John Grisham's update of To Kill a Mockingbird, about a black man on trial for killing a white rapist, looks like an earnest debate in unyielding close-up. The cast is led by three smart stars (Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey), so for now we'll give it a pass...
...whirling lunacy they concocted, Melrose writers still kept a hand in the world of plausible fantasy--the bend-don't-break rule that is the essence of soap-opera craft. The writers also understood that soaps must always have, at their core, at least one pair of earnest lovers whose thwarted longing fuels the drama. Melrose has Billy and Alison, lovers too personalityless to be destined for any other. Last year we cared whether they would beat gargantuan odds--Alison's alcoholism, her affair with an N.F.L. sex addict--and find their way back into each other's hearts. This...