Word: habitant
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...Yale Law School graduate and smooth TV performer, Robertson is capable of giving a thoroughly reasoned admonition against the dangers of huge budget deficits, as he did last week in Iowa. But no matter what his topic, his speech is laced with religious allusions; he has a preacher's habit of stretching out words (free-dom, A-mer-i-ca) for emphasis. Though he smiles brightly and often, even when the smile is out of sync with the tone of his words, he taps what he describes as "a rage and frustration building up in - certain quarters of this country...
...Reagan letter, according to one State Department official, "will keep the Soviets guessing about what our real bottom line is." Some in the Administration are pleased with this strategy. They say it is a healthy change. The U.S. had grown too much into the habit during the '70s of making the first move, then adjusting and compromising to accommodate Soviet recalcitrance. They are glad to see the tables turned, with the Soviets saying "please" and the U.S. saying "no, thank you" for a change...
...television appears to reflect marvelous diversity, it in fact fosters uniformity. Varieties of American speech, fashions and opinions are modified toward sameness by the examples of what millions of Americans watch. It also seems to me that television achieves part of its power by appealing to human weaknesses. The habit of viewing it does not encourage reflection or contemplation. The eye is trained to crave novelty, while the brain rests or slumbers. Political debate, which during my last visit seemed a passion and a recreation among Americans, has shrunk to brief bursts of pleasant images. And television's ascent...
...charity events like Live Aid could help get the young into the habit of giving. But organizers are already worrying about "compassion fatigue." Pop charity may turn out to be one more passing fad. At the upper end of the economic scale, some wonder if charity is in danger of succumbing to chic. New York Financier Felix Rohatyn, who along with his wife Elizabeth has launched a small crusade against events that concentrate more on social glamour than helping worthy causes, is concerned that the pet charities of the New York rich, the favored museums and cultural institutions and hospitals...
...perfectly American to run between extremes of self-loathing and self- congratulation. Americans have a manic habit of thinking that they are either the best of peoples or the worst of peoples. This may result from the fact that Americans tend, still, to hold a Ptolemaic rather than a Copernican view of their place in the universe. Whatever America is, best or worst, it is at the center of things. At the moment, after the long self-lacerations of Viet Nam, Watergate and the rest, Americans in the Reagan era seem in the mood for assertive self-celebration...