Word: fiascoes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...discovered will harm the national interest. "I have no desire to expose intelligence secrets merely for a scoop," he says. "But I am enthusiastic about baring things that bureaucrats are hiding to protect their own bungling. I have been digging a long time for details about the construction fiasco of the new embassies in Moscow and Washington." Though Van Voorst's involvement in espionage is decades behind him, he still maintains an extensive library of books on spying. And, of course, he still wears a trench coat...
...Rangers parachuted onto the airstrip at the other end of the island at Point Salines. It was a successful operation, and the Marines did themselves proud, but it raised questions about their unique role as the nation's elite amphibious strike force. And fairly or not, the Iranian arms fiasco has been partly associated with the gung-ho "Marine mind-set" of Oliver North and the command-and-control system of former Marines Robert McFarlane and Donald Regan...
...FILMING this blind date gone rotten, Blake Edwards leaves no nightmares undreamt. Houses that have always stood in one place are suddenly carried away and beds that have always been sturdy cave in. Following the dinner fiasco, the rest of the night is spent in a California-freeway car chase with Nadia's homicidal ex-boyfriend David (John Larroquette), who also happens to be a trial lawyer...
...course there are the dark images of the Iranian fiasco: the President's men skulking around, with cake and Bible and guns, on ventures so goofy as to seem unhinged; the tablets of Valium that Robert McFarlane swallowed. The Iran affair destroyed Reagan's nimbus of immunity, subverted his magic. His political authority derived from the idea that Ronald Reagan believed certain simple things profoundly, with an incorruptible candor. He would bob his head, in the way he has, and smile and say, "Here I stand: I can do no other." Martin Luther washed up on the beaches of Malibu...
Artistically, Starlight hurtles toward the freight yards of fiasco. Even by its own standards -- its creators seek to be judged in the context of Disneyland, not Sweeney Todd -- it is too much of the same thing going on for too long. And unlike Disneyland, Starlight is a passive experience: the audience doesn't come along for the ride, physically or emotionally. After opening moments of real wonder, the dramatic tension depends increasingly on what tricks the set can do next: opening the floor to send up a concealed bedroom or judging stand; filling the midnight sky with stars that sketch...