Word: explainers
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...infighting of the past few years. Under Nelson Mandela, the ANC peerlessly wielded its moral authority. But that trait also encouraged leaders to think they were above reproach, an attitude that found its fullest expression in Mbeki, who often acted as if he had no reason to explain himself and simply asked people to take his decisions on trust. That trust wilted, thanks to ANC scandals over corruption, incompetence and abuse of power. The party is in no danger of losing power. But the days when it commanded widespread respect and spoke with purpose and clarity are long gone. After...
...jarring to hear Charlotte's power brokers explain that it's important to improve their city not for its own sake but for the sake of its businesses, which need high-quality culture to attract high-quality talent. But even if they sometimes make Charlotte sound like a New South wealth-generating machine that happens to contain people, their boosterism is producing real progress. Charlotte still has problems with smog, schools and sprawl, and a few condo projects have stalled in the credit crunch. But Charlotte's mix of climate, cheap housing, new urban amenities and old habits of materialism...
...pacing is flawless, and the trash level is just right. And One Fifth Avenue has other virtues that are harder to explain. It has an actual Weltanschauung--it gets at the deep truth of shallow people. Women control men with sex. Men control women with money. With rare exceptions, marriage is a Punch-and-Judy slugfest that ends with either divorce or one party's total subjugation. Power and pleasure are the only things that are real, and they endlessly swap places as means and end. Everybody in One Fifth Avenue, good and bad, is bound by these rules...
...Alice, Ben’s best friends who continue to have sex so they can “get it right” despite their recent breakup; Marc Molina, the hip school guidance counselor; and Ashley, Amy’s witty, monotone, pseudo-goth younger sister. I would explain how all these characters relate to each other, but I have to be somewhere by next Tuesday.Now before you jump to any conclusions like, “This pretentious Harvard columnist is just hating on ‘Secret Life’ because he doesn’t realize teen soaps...
They are different in so many ways: one Republican, one Democrat; one in his 70s, one in his 40s; one white, one black. But John McCain and Barack Obama share the genome of the alpha pol. Timing and instinct are among the dominant traits. How else to explain the fact that both men chose precisely the same day - nearly the same hour - to field press questions for the first time about the collapsing financial sector and the government's proposed $700 billion bailout? Like the cicada crawling up from the earth precisely 17 years after its mom lays her eggs...