Word: formulaic
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...will it be? If the question were only that simple. Positioning oneself for Popehood is a catch-22 on a cosmic scale. To be a front runner in the race is, according to church tradition, a formula for losing it. "He who goes into the conclave as Pope comes out a Cardinal," goes the Roman maxim. Take the case of the Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, 71, one of several so-called papabili (Italian for "Popables"). Castrillon Hoyos speaks several languages and possesses an attractive combination of real-world pastoral experience and inside-the-Vatican bureaucratic savvy...
...Census people were savvy. Or, really, credit goes to their overseeing agency, the Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for telling federal agencies how to use Census data in monitoring civil rights compliance. Now, when data are tabulated for a compliance issue, there is a simple formula. People who check a single race never move from their boxes; in situations where at least two boxes are checked, minority trumps white, and one minority will trump another, depending on the issue for which data are being collected. Sure, the formula is an embrace of the old one-drop rule...
When I was in London during World War II, I learned that bombing a people is the best possible way to create solidarity among them. And I have watched the formula work in various countries ever since. This is what is happening in Iraq. I don't know the best way to deal with Saddam Hussein, but I do know that cementing allegiance among his people while killing children is not the way. JOHN F. MASON Barcelona
Down in the chigger latitudes when I was a kid, it used to pass for tolerance, now and then, to try to get away with a formula stating, in effect, that one's racism had nothing to do with race...
...suppose that Senator Byrd's use of the "white n-----/ black n------" formula might be excused as an indiscretion of senility. (On the other hand, I'd like to hear the commentary if, say, the current United States attorney general had delivered himself of this charming conceit during his confirmation hearings. Borked? He would have been lynched...