Word: geniality
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cavazos' ouster was long overdue. The genial but ineffectual Reagan holdover -- one of two Hispanics in George Bush's Cabinet -- had long been the most visible symbol of the President's failure to make good on his 1988 campaign pledge to be the "education President." Among those reportedly on the short list to become Cavazos' successor: former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, now president of the University of Tennessee, and Lynne Cheney, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities...
Alas, poor Cyrano. For decades he has been little more than a rumor of antique flourishes, known to the mass American audience mainly as the source of Steve Martin's genial little comedy Roxanne. Swordsman and poet, idealist and unrequited lover, born rebel as well as natural nobleman, the hero of Edmond Rostand's great romantic play is not, face it, a figure calculated to inspire a nonromantic age. One does not suppose, for example, that he figures very largely in George Bush's inner life. Or, for that matter, Jesse Jackson...
...strange, ectoplasmic life in the pages of other people's books, most of them written by his former dancers at New York City Ballet. One, Gelsey Kirkland's angry, vengeful Dancing on My Grave (1986), made the best-seller lists. This year brings a slight but more genial coda from Kirkland and the memoir the dance world has been waiting for, from Mr. B.'s last muse, Suzanne Farrell...
QUICK CHANGE. Bill Murray pulls off a bank heist in a clown suit, but he doesn't need a red nose to be funny. The actor's glancing, genial sarcasm buoys the action for the first half-hour. Then this caper comedy sinks into a puddle of urban rancor. Who needs another stale chorus of I Hate New York...
...theme that runs through all of Reddin's work, notably Rum and Coke (1985), Big Time (1987) and Nebraska (1989): the tandem dangers of run-amuck individualism and nice-guy uninvolvement. The central character in Life During Wartime is, like almost all of Reddin's heroes, a genial but morally weightless young man. When he learns that other salespeople in his home-security firm are running a sideline in burglary -- for the loot and to generate additional sales -- he assumes it has nothing to do with him. Tragically late, he finds that it does. Reddin's point, no less forceful...