Word: genial
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Bush won the debate largely because he triumphed in the congeniality competition. But has the pursuit of the presidency become trivialized by this intense emphasis on likability? After all, TV game-show hosts are uniformly genial, but few Americans want Pat Sajak presiding over the National Security Council...
...what we are pleased to think of as the American Dream of success: his factory produced only a few dozen cars before it closed. But there is another more common, more potent American Dream, which involves not the invention of products but the invention of self. And this movie, genial and fierce, is proof of Tucker's success in that more basic line. And proof of its sure grip on our imaginations...
Eddie Murphy, king of the box office, plays an African prince who goes to Queens in the genial, shambling comedy Coming to America...
...sure, there are similarities. Both men have been accused of using their office to benefit friends and acquaintances: Meese's former personal lawyer E. Robert Wallach and, in Wright's case, oilmen and investors in the Speaker's home state of Texas. And though the personalities of the genial California-bred Attorney General and the peppery Texas Speaker differ, they are alike in one way. Says Ted Van Dyk, a Washington lobbyist who knows the two: "Both apparently wear blinders" that prevent them from seeing appearances of impropriety in their actions...
Dirty Harry is no complainer. He is genial with strangers, patient with the press. And in a movie-mad country where the names of directors like Sydney Pollack and Carl Dreyer appear on the tiles of France's favorite TV game show, La Roue de la Fortune, Eastwood the auteur is an imposing ambassador for American star quality. It so happens that the film he brought to Cannes, which he directed but does not appear in, is no great shakes. It meanders like a 2- hr. 43-min. sax solo by one of Parker's lesser disciples, and it never...