Word: grasp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...narrative is stippled with much detail about the Justices' inner motives and feelings: Potter Stewart's stomach is said to "knot" before a meeting with President Nixon; William Brennan "felt betrayed" at one point; Burger, who never spoke to the authors, "vowed to himself that he would grasp the reins of power immediately." Complains University of Chicago Law Professor Philip Kurland, a longtime court watcher: "We're just told by the authors that we've got to believe it. It's all Deep Throat-at best, hearsay twice removed." Says Critic Renata Adler, a Yale...
PETER SELLARS HAS BALLS. His King Lear drives Shakespeare's poetry to a North Hollywood parking lot, yanks it from the back seat and stabs it helter-skelter while the gods guffaw. But Sellars' production fails because it attempts too much, his ambition exceeds his grasp. Far from letting the play breathe, he beats it about the neck with a crowbar, adding abrasions and welts until he obscures his own intentions. By any interpretation, Lear should not be an interminable, mired melodrama set in a tempest of technology. Sellars' Lear is a tragedy of excess...
...perfect, like a big Hollywood production, full of appealing and unbelievable stimuli--too many faces and noises and victories and cameras and rumors and foreign languages and famous people--and too little real stuff like food and warmth and places to sit down. It's impossible to grasp. Watching it on television is easy by comparison...
Combining an ease of manner with a touch of the patrician Yankee and an impressive intellectual grasp, Bush does not excite his audiences; he reassures them. Emphasizing his considerable foreign affairs experience (CIA director, Ambassador to the U.N. and China), he criticizes Carter for overemphasizing human rights and calls instead for a policy based on strategic interests. Says he: "I sense that people are frustrated about foreign affairs. It is not a frantic cry but more of a muted feeling about how to restore respect for the U.S." He admits that the caucuses will be a "first test of whether...
...surveyed 10,000 youngsters to help develop the series. The surveys found that students were quick to grasp pictures, but yawned at lengthy explanations. 3-2-1 Contact thus keeps the film rolling and dialogue fast paced. The inevitable result: few detailed discussions of scientific theories or principles. National Frisbee Champion Krae Van Sickle, for instance, likens the spinning disc to a gyroscope, but fails to explain what a gyroscope is, or how it works. The show rushes on to a glider sailing through the Colorado skies. It is all pleasant viewing, but does it really teach science? Probably...