Word: germanically
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...keep Sterling on the gold standard and avoid the inflation into which another Labor Cabinet must rush by printing enough money to keep up their Dole pace. As a horrible example of inflation. Orator James Ramsay MacDonald flourished a dog-eared envelope with the cry, "My friends, during the German inflation it cost 80,000,000,000 marks to buy enough postage stamps to send this letter to England! Do you want that sort of government...
...Brits have stuck by us in Iraq, and they continue to supply a good portion of our Broadway theater. But that doesn't mean we have to thank them for everything. Take Democracy, the new Michael Frayn play about former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt that just opened on Broadway. The play won nearly unanimous critical raves in London, walked away with major awards and promised to provide Broadway with at least one prestige dramatic hit of the season. But Democracy is one British import that doesn't survive the crossing...
Frayn charts the rise and fall of Brandt--the left-leaning Chancellor who made the first major steps toward reconciliation with communist East Germany--through the eyes of Gunter Güillaume, a trusted aide who turned out to be an East German spy. "When people asked me what I was writing about," Frayn told the New York Times, "I would say, 'German politics in the 1970s,' and their eyes would glaze over." Cute, but the anecdote doesn't have the right punch line. Despite the efforts of this estimable playwright (Noises Off, Copenhagen), the audience's eyes glaze over...
Frayn's technique is a fluid mix of re-enactment and narration, docudrama and memory play. Most of the story is told by Güillaume, a Teutonic Sammy Glick who worked his way into Brandt's confidence--and passed along everything he saw and heard to his East German contact, who converses with him from a corner of the stage for much of the play. We witness Brandt's political successes, the infighting among his Cabinet, his knack for galvanizing crowds and his weakness for women. But it's all surprisingly dry and flatfooted as drama: too much tell...
...expand and revamp the U.N.'s most important decision-making body, the Security Council. If approved, the recommendations would produce the biggest shake-up at Turtle Bay in more than a generation. "The chances of thorough reform have never been as good as they are now," says a German official...