Word: excepts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With fewer words but equal devastation, Epstein draws a bead on Norman Mailer and plugs him as "a serious writer except when he is thinking, and the trouble is that over his long career he has been thinking a very great deal." Perhaps to quote such provocative thrashings is to suggest an intemperate, flailing harangue, but every round-house blow is prepared-with deft, critical jabs and well-documented proof of delinquency...
...such getups somehow suggest the '50s, now conceived on the evidence of old Marilyn Monroe movies to have been a quaint and fascinating though slightly tacky time, rich in flirtatious, pre-feminist sexuality. Although to her it's a joke, Madonna's "Boy Toy" belt buckle offends almost everyone except the Wanna Be's. Those who snoozed through the '50s the first time around are mystified. Some feminists clearly feel that Madonna's self-parody as an eye-batting gold digger, notably in her song Material Girl, is a joke too damaging to laugh at. Somebody has said that...
Kids born since the breakup of the Beatles, however, don't want to hear any of this. Can't hear anything else, at this tick of the clock except brassy, trashy, junk-jingling, stage-stomping Madonna, who has been world famous for almost two months. Just now she is the hottest draw in show biz. Michael Jackson? History. Prince? The Peloponnesian Wars. Cyndi Lauper? Last week's flash, and besides, if you wanna be like Cyndi, you have to dye your hair orange and fuchsia, and your parents freak. No, Madonna is the full moon you see at this bend...
...absorption amounts to innocence. She dresses weirdly too; in one scene she parades through the streets wearing what appears to be men's boxer shorts, over which she has rigged a white garter belt, which holds up white lace stockings, which disappear into rhinestone boots. Madonna admits that Susan, except for her four-second attention span, is to some extent a self-caricature, and it remains to be seen what she could do with a role that required her to wear grown-ups' clothes. The guess here is that she would be very good. It does not take much imagination...
...that attitude is pragmatic: it encourages Western nations to provide assistance. Opposition leaders say privately the threat of the contras has also had a moderating effect. For his part, Vice President Sergio Ramirez Mercado insists, "There's not a step we could take that would be acceptable to Reagan, except to leave the country." He adds, "We have never thought of establishing a one-party system of Marxism. We don't want a Soviet or Bulgarian model." Among a growing number of Nicaraguans, that distinction may be irrelevant. It is the Sandinista model that they find increasingly hard to accept...