Word: grand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...easy to write fiction inspired by current events, especially if those events involve politics. The stage is too grand, the spotlight too bright. Our public life already is ridiculously flagrant, far too obvious and overwrought for good fiction. And so, all too often, political novels descend from satire into cheap farce. Such books can be entertaining and sometimes cathartic but usually not very nourishing. American Wife is something else entirely - the opposite of a political satire, in fact - with a languorous pace and a fierce literary integrity: Alice and Charlie are complete creations, unique in their humanity - Alice especially...
...forest spirits more domesticated than the ones in Princess Mononoke; and Kiki's Delivery Service, with a 13-year-old witch starting her own business. Those movies, which in their Disney DVD versions have diverted many an American child, prove that Miyazaki is more than a giant brain hatching grand schemes. At heart, at 67, he's a kid - to be precise, a little girl...
...time to wrap up Day One of the Republican convention, where delegates of the Grand Old Party have gathered to nominate John McCain as their presidential candidate. So that means it must be time to play good news, bad news...
Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight wasn't what people have come to expect from a Barack Obama speech. It wasn't filled with lofty rhetoric or grand cadences. It did not induce tears or euphoria. It didn't have the forced, kitschy call and response tropes - "and that's the change we need!" - that defaced nearly every other major speech at this convention. At 43 minutes, nailing his dismount at 10:53 pm, it wasn't even very long. It was lean, efficient, practical and very very tough...
...advisers and friends to McCain, but neither is his captain nor his conscience. At times, they serve as his protectors and his soldiers, often spewing negative invective that can border on name-calling. But politics is not their first love or final destination. Unlike Karl Rove, neither man has grand plans to transform Republican politics or the country. They rose to the top of the Washington rock pile by happenstance as much as by design--Salter because of his close friendship with McCain, and Schmidt because most of McCain's other advisers resigned last year. Together, they have edged...