Word: grist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...grow, the images of sadism symbolized all that is going wrong with the U.S. venture in Iraq. The photos touched off a global outcry, especially in the Arab world, where they provoked fresh fury among millions of Muslims opposed to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and provided grist for every conspiracy theorist who claims the U.S. is bent on debasing Islam and humiliating Arabs. "We're going to live with the consequences of this for the next 40 years," says a senior White House official, and few would accuse him of exaggeration. Most immediately, the scandal has imperiled...
...face it: this political campaign is suffering from a grist shortage. There just isn't enough good material for the media mills to process. That's why legitimate stories like McCain's Baghdad gaffe and Romney's hunting fib get pored over like the Kennedy assassination. It's why even the most implausible self-declared presidential candidate is not laughed offstage. It's why the ravings of Newt Gingrich are greeted respectfully...
...other development contributing to the grist shortage is, of course, the Internet in general and blogs in particular. This is clearly the Blog Election: four years ago, blogs were not yet omnipresent, and four years from now, the mainstream media may not be as terrorized by them...
...grist shortage is pretty clearly responsible for the vastly increased emphasis being given this year to one story in particular: the so-called money primary. The first quarterly campaign-finance reports from the candidates were released recently, but leaks and rumors about how much has been raised by whom have been big news for at least a month. Obama almost tied Hillary! Romney did well by tapping prosperous Mormons! What's good about this material is that it is hard data allowing for objective comparisons among the candidates. It barely matters what the hard data are about. Could be freckles...
...written by Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo and one of Japan's most nationalistic politicians. That such a film would play in the mainstream and be made with technical support from today's Japanese military, which you'd think would steer clear of this particular subject, will be grist for the mill to those warning of a rise in "dangerous" nationalism in Japan...