Word: gorillas
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...needed to make a strategic alliance to gain King Kong-like size and access to hoards of cash. Capital Cities bought ABC, General Electric acquired NBC, Murdoch bought Fox, and Time Inc. acquired Warner Communications. As Wasserman reportedly told an MCA shareholder last year, "We're a 200-lb. gorilla in a game with 1,000-lb. gorillas. We've got to become a 1,000-lb. gorilla or get out of the game...
...Exhibit A was Jane Goodall, whose work on chimpanzees in Tanzania has been justly celebrated. Exhibit B also achieved acclaim but, on balance, muted the generalization. In 1966 Leakey sent Dian Fossey to the Congo slope of the Virunga volcanic forest to study the habits of the mountain gorilla. Fossey convinced the eminent prehistorian of her resolve with only a few free-lance articles she had written for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Her previous job was as an occupational therapist in Kentucky...
What Fossey had was determination and emotional hungers that drove her to extremes. She told her story in Gorillas in the Mist (1983), a bold mix of field observation, adventure and ecological tragedy. The mountain gorilla was being pushed out of its habitat by human population growth. Poachers were trapping the creatures for zoos or killing them for trophies. Gorilla heads made unusual hat racks. The hands could be used for ashtrays...
...personal, somewhat awkward but elucidating note: in 1984 Fossey wrote me that she had read my review of Gorillas in the Mist over the graves of Digit, Uncle Bert and Macho. "I could finally comprehend," she said, "that the gorilla individuals I had known and named over the years since 1967 might well become public figures, not on a rock-star scale, but renowned for their own worth, lamented for their loss." Postscript: Fossey is buried next to them...
...growing rift between the N.R.A. and some police groups is another important reason lawmakers feel freer to resist gun-lobby pressure. Last year the N.R.A. went up against Texas police groups over its lobbying for a law permitting citizens to carry concealed weapons. "They're an 800-lb. gorilla with no finesse," complains Ronald DeLord, president of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas. "Every issue isn't the Alamo...