Word: earnestness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...captures Simon's eclectic enthusiasms: an insightful chronicle of Abraham Lincoln's years in the Illinois legislature; a critique of Americans' disinterest in learning foreign languages; and a 1967 primer, written with Jeanne, a Roman Catholic, titled Protestant-Catholic Marriages Can Succeed. Several of his books capture Simon's earnest belief in self- improvement. A 1986 guide for young people, Beginnings, recommends these antidotes for loneliness: "walk through three stores . . . write a poem . . . take a shower...
...until its boy editor stumbled on punchboard gambling in Madison County. With the impetuousness of youth, Simon unearthed a daisy chain of gambling and prostitution operating under the protection of local officials. A typical issue of the Tribune would combine an angry front-page editorial decrying gambling with an earnest column by the editor ("Trojan Thoughts") singing the praises of church camps...
Those who watched the Iran and Bork hearings were reminded of how inadequate a capsule summary can be if you've seen the movie. Less familiar committee members -- Inouye, Hamilton, Mitchell, Specter, Simpson -- appealed just because their humanity hadn't vanished behind a professional veneer. They were earnest, perhaps a little verbose, sometimes eloquent, decidedly human, and a welcome change from the usual Washington sound-bite sophisticate...
...home to more than 1.5 million Jews, the largest Jewish population outside of the U.S. and Israel. The State Department estimates that 400,000 of them may want to leave the country, although only 30,000 have formally requested visa applications. Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union began in earnest in 1971. But after it peaked in 1979, Moscow drastically reduced the number of emigration permits the following year, claiming that many applicants -- even those who had worked at menial jobs -- possessed "state secrets." The cutback was a response to heated Western criticism of Moscow's December 1979 invasion...
Mixing laughter and tears in one package, of course, is hardly a revolutionary idea. Hollywood movies have been doing it for decades, from Charlie Chaplin through Terms of Endearment. Some of TV's classic family shows, such as Father Knows Best, were as much earnest morality plays as laugh-out-loud comedies, and groundbreaking sitcoms like All in the Family and M*A*S*H demonstrated more than a decade ago that TV comedy is not incompatible with social commentary. Still, genre labels seem especially askew these days. Bruce Willis won this year's Emmy Award for lead actor...