Word: grass
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Reading Gnter Grass's recent Nobel Lecture I was struck by two things: it's rather disjointed--like it was written in a hurry--and it's wrong in a predictable way. The triteness of it took me by surprise. I haven't read any of Grass's books, not even The Tin Drum (heck, I haven't even seen the movie), but it was my understanding that he was one of the best living writers and that his Nobel Prize for literature was long overdue. Maybe so, but his Nobel Lecture strikes me as the sort of thing that...
...lecture, Grass seems to be going through the usual motions: anecdotes from the history of literature, references to his youth, material from his own novels, an armchair liberal's criticism of the dehumanizing influence of modern science and the free market, insinuations that the Nobel Prize is really not such a big deal and a conclusion that portrays literature as a heroic struggle for the future of the human race. None of this is very original, and in this case it does not gel together very well. Past Nobel Lectures like Saramago's, Garcia Marquez's and Faulkner's have...
Musharraf: I would like to move toward the substance of democracy and away from the sham democracy we have had. I want a true democracy at the grass-roots level in which people can govern themselves and run their own health programs and road construction. Members of the National Assembly were doling out uncontrolled funds and controlling people's destinies at their whims. I'll change that...
...this was about as good as it gets, at least so far: Bayonet drills. Fifty of us in an empty classroom, slashing, thrusting and smashing our way through imaginary commies, yelling "kill" with every move and tossing out the creeds in unison: "Blood, blood, blood makes the green grass grow, drill sergeant!" and "Kill, kill, kill with the cold blue steel...
...build support around the country, Microsoft brought on staff a veteran of Direct Impact, a D.C.-area firm whose clients have included the tobacco industry, managed-care companies and others who want "grass-roots" responses generated on issues. Another addition: Tom Synhorst, a political operative and phone-bank virtuoso who does projects for George W. Bush. And there's evidence of Microsoft's courting business and political players at the smallest levels. In September, senior vice president Craig Mundie spoke to the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Chamber of Commerce, drawing an overflow crowd of about 900. Last month former Republican National...