Word: explains
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Popular culture shines its klieg lights on the most intimate corners of our lives, and most of us play right along. If all we really wanted was to be left alone, explain the lasting popularity of Oprah and Sally and Ricki tell-all TV. Memoirs top the best-seller lists, with books about incest and insanity and illness leading the way. Perfect strangers at cocktail parties tell me the most disturbing details of their abusive upbringings...
...this day she cannot really explain what happened. "I got into it, and I couldn't get out," she says simply. But she does admit she was terrified of telling her children. That anxiety keeps many other fraud victims falling for new scams in the hope of replacing some of the lost money so their sons and daughters will never know. Says Shelly Feldman, president of a Florida fraud-fighting organization called Senior Sleuths: "They're afraid their kids will say they can't handle their finances and they'll be put in a nursing home...
...that any trial would explain why Pol Pot did what he did. One looked in vain into that age-spotted, teary-eyed face for the source of the inventiveness that dreams up a portable guillotine for children. He seemed so quiet, evil recollected in tranquillity. Time passing has made him look like an ordinary man, perhaps even to those who survived and know better...
There is another theory to explain the sweet birdies of youth. As with most sports, the athletes are simply better than they once were, and that has enabled them to make a quicker impact. Woods is, of course, Exhibit A, the longest hitter on the tour despite his tender age and slender build. But Els is also a prime example of the new athleticism. When President Clinton saw the 6-ft. 3-in. Els at Congressional, he commented, "Big, strong kid, isn't he? Looks like a linebacker...
...making the silly error of carrying a gun through an airport metal detector. Like most, he'll probably get a hand slap (he was charged with a misdemeanor last week), not the two to 10 years and $10,000 fine the third-degree felony can pack. How to explain the slip-up? Fast thinking, contrition and imagination. Here are some of the most creative excuses from illegally armed celebs...