Word: fatale
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Then came Fatal Vision, the biggest hit of his career, with an NBC mini- series to boot. The devil's bargain to make it happen was that McGinniss had to befriend, become the business partner of and even, for technical legal reasons, join the defense team of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a man eventually convicted of beating to death his pregnant wife and two children. Well before the jury spoke, McGinniss had come to believe his man was guilty. But to protect the book contract he had to keep his subject happy, and he did so, not just by concealing opinions...
...telling the mother's story, McGinniss cannot be accused of glorifying a neurotic criminal. Nor, he is at pains to emphasize, can he be charged with exploitation. He did not seek out his subject. Rather, she came to him -- because, he gloats, she so admired Fatal Vision...
...tactic has posted dramatic results. Nationwide studies indicate that fatal nighttime crashes have dropped 9%, and the National Transportation Safety Board has estimated that if all 50 states adopted ALRs, 2,000 lives could be spared each year. "It seems to work because of the certainty," says Jane Roemer of the National Safety Council. "People know that if they are found to be drinking and driving there will be immediate punishment." Civil libertarians charge that the laws violate the principles of due process and presumption of innocence, but Roemer counters that no state has yet rejected ALRs on constitutional grounds...
Increasingly, however, there is a counterchorus, an opposing rendition of the same events that deems Columbus' first footfall in the New World to be fatal to the world he invaded, and even to the rest of the globe. The indigenous peoples and their cultures were doomed by European arrogance, brutality and infectious diseases. Columbus' gift was slavery to those who greeted him; his arrival set in motion the ruthless destruction, continuing at this very moment, of the natural world he entered. Genocide, ecocide, exploitation -- even the notion of Columbus as a "discoverer" -- are deemed to be a form of Eurocentric...
...Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking for the Nineties (Crown; $30). Comfort's message is that you can still have a lot of fun in bed, but you had better be careful. Casual coupling -- one-night stands, sex with strangers, group sex, sex without adequate precautions -- can be fatal...