Word: eviler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that some forms of "popular" entertainment--most notably television--have at least as many detractors as advocates. The chorus of critics of the godawful tube swells measurably with every September's new harvest of sitcoms, and their dirge, for good reason usually, is deafeningly loud. Television has had enough evil-sounding adjectives attached to it to intimidate Roget, and the articles on the T.V. drug don't just proliferate, they pullulate. And one has to feel we have scaled the pinnacle of absurdity when T.V. performs a dialogue between self and soul and covers the trial of a young felon...
Baker's anecdotes and almanac-ish tips depict a world less evil than crazy and people afflicted less by self-interest than by tunnel vision. But even his most pointed observations are, at bottom, funny. When he satirizes network news in an anecdote showing how television "covered" the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden Eden, it is with the lightest of touches. Baker's ability to portray the less palatable sides of American life while keeping readers chuckling at his insights has made him America's funniest social critic; it also makes the Almanac splendid reading...
...intend to send the youngsters on a suicide mission, but he is the first one to talk about footholds and not giving in without a fight. Before things get out of hand, Scott interprets Bache's personal plight as an obsolete relic with considerable compassion; this is not an evil man, merely one who has let vague notions of glory replace rationality and skepticism...
Christianity, of course, has not generally been pacifist, subscribing instead to St. Augustine's "just war" theory. That theory, argues San Francisco's Catholic Archbishop John Quinn, requires that a licit conflict must produce more good than evil and must protect large populations from indiscriminate injury. On those criteria, says Quinn, "it could never be morally justified to use strategic nuclear weapons...
...outrage against the "coercion and violation of human rights on a massive scale" and the "arbitrary power" that the Communist regime of Poland has used in its effort to crush Solidarity, Reagan sounded more certain than ever that Communism is evil, but less confident than before that it is doomed. His ambivalence is understandable. It reflects a contradiction that is inherent in Soviet-style Communism, which is not primarily a system for making sure that people are fed, housed, healthy, safe, productively engaged and free to pursue happiness...