Word: harmlessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other, more serious, half of the problem lies in the book's format. Broder says he wanted to let his politicians speak for themselves-and do they speak. The author's confidence in his subjects' political futures may be partially born out by their mastery of the Harmless Generalization, the Well-Intentioned Cliche and the Uncontroversial Piety. Normally a tough and inquisitive journalist, Broder lets answers like "If you look at the history of Western Civilization, the facts are pretty clear that man's progress is accelerated in periods when...we allow markets to allocate resources," (Rep. Phil Gramm...
...admit to somewhat similar behavior--on a smaller scale--at home in front of my television screen, enjoying a private relationship with the camera (I kid myself that, like James Stewart in Rear Window, I am unseen); but there's something frightening about seeing your own harmless perversions enthusiastically endorsed by hundreds of people. Except these people didn't seem to want to question their responses. They seemed like the leering, drooling maniacs in the asylum scene of Brian Depalma's Dressed to Kill, applauding the strangulation and partial stripping of a nurse. The image is a sardonic joke...
...admit to somewhat similar behavior--on a smaller scale--at home in front of my television screen, enjoying a private relationship with the camera (I kid myself that, like James Stewart in Rear Window, I am unseen); but there's something frightening about seeing your own harmless perversions enthusiastically endorsed by hundreds of people. Except these people didn't seem to want to question their responses. They seemed like the leering, drooling maniacs in the asylum scene of Brian Depalma's Dressed to Kill, applauding the strangulation and partial stripping of a nurse. The image is a sardonic joke...
...admit to somewhat similar behavior--on a smaller scale--at home in front of my television screen, enjoying a private relationship with the camera (I kid myself that, like James Stewart in Rear Window, I am unseen); but there's something frightening about seeing your own harmless perversions enthusiastically endorsed by hundreds of people. Except these people didn't seem to want to question their responses. They seemed like the leering, drooling maniacs in the asylum scene of Brian Depalma's Dressed to Kill, applauding the strangulation and partial stripping of a nurse. The image is a sardonic joke...
...explained his truce by marveling at the Queen Mother's ability to combine "a love of the countryside, a passion for horses and dogs, an enthusiasm for angling -and, so it is said, a wholesome taste for a wee dram of her native Scotland's national beverage-harmless pleasures which have never interfered with her sense of duty." More than that, those pleasures nourished the charm with which the Queen Mum humanized British royalty. "She came into the royal family from the outside," observes an old friend. "She brought a naturalness and spontaneity that is trained...