Word: foolishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stability-impaired wordsmith we met 15 years ago in author Friedman's earlier novel About Harry Towns is still frisky, still foolish. Still capable, in fact, of careering into a writers' bar in lower Manhattan wearing, because of a recent mugging, only a sheet, and this early in a long evening. Friedman is funny and reliably irrelevant. Writing, he seems to be saying, is less dignified than the mail-order truss business, which is a truth on which to hang your...
...long view that includes his fascination with ancient Rome ("I can barely express my admiration for it") and the imperial record of the English. Their achievement calls forth some of his best bis: "Pretty terrific. It would be churlish to say otherwise. It would be foolish to say otherwise. It would be unhistorical to say otherwise...
...Beijing, where most of the carnage took place, citizens are not yet foolish enough -- or desperate enough -- to buy the government's line. But they are toeing it, as a sullen normality descends on the city. Although most of the tanks are gone, the streets still teem with helmeted soldiers, AK-47s poised at their sides. The handwritten broadsheets that served as a free press have been peeled from walls, but perhaps some cyclists are heartened as they spot one last declaration chalked on the Forbidden City: THE FASCIST GOVERNMENT OPPRESSES THE ENTIRE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY. It is impossible...
Green said that Harvard is not to blame for the problem. "To scream about why there aren't professors is foolish," she said...
Shevardnadze persuaded Moscow that its plans were foolish, but he may not be as successful in placating tempers this time. Only a public trial and punishment of the army officers responsible for the decision to clear the crowd is likely to satisfy the Georgians, and many will still press for more independence from Moscow. The Supreme Soviet last week issued a double-edged decree that is not likely to improve matters. It replaces discredited laws against dissidents but conveniently enables the state to imprison those found guilty of "kindling inter-ethnic or racial hostility." Unless ethnic passions in Tbilisi...