Word: heroicize
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...many divisions does the Pope have, Stalin asked. Yet an idea that changes lives can have more power than an army that takes them--which leaves Gutenberg presiding over the 15th century, Jefferson over the 18th. Making body counts the ultimate measure of influence precludes the possibility of heroic sacrifice, a single death that inspires countless others to live their lives differently, a young man in front of a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square. "Five hundred years from now, it won't be Hitler we remember," says theologian Martin Marty. "Hitler may have set the century's agenda...
...Hollywood these days, a spectacle is what some randy star makes of himself at 3 a.m. on Sunset Boulevard. American movies have lost the love of grandeur, of finding the heroic scale of historical figures. Chen Kaige to the rescue! China's longest-reigning angry young filmmaker has an eye for rapturous compositions on a huge and telling tapestry. His new film mixes DeMille and Dostoyevsky: the cast-of-thousands splendor of a biblical epic and the gnarled psychology of Chen's own Farewell My Concubine. And all in less time than a Stephen King prison drama...
...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 done many of these things better and more coherently. But originality and style...
...problem is that up on the stage, when he tries to tell stories not about his reckless youth or his heroic comrades but about average Americans and their everyday lives, he is working with much dryer clay. He is best when he is angry, not empathic. He blazes with indignation that 12,000 military families are on food stamps while Congress approves a $325 million aircraft carrier the Pentagon doesn't want. But when the subject turns to the dining-room-table issues that top every list of voter concerns--education, health care, moral values--McCain seems to lose some...
...Zbigniew Brzezinski. "It was a gutsy call, and he called it just right." It was more than good timing. While campaign finance is his calling card, foreign affairs is McCain's intellectual passion. Flashing his foreign-policy credentials has become a crucial tactic, because it reminds audiences of his heroic past as well as the advantages he holds over Bush in expertise and experience. After delivering a wide-ranging foreign-policy speech in Washington last week, McCain all but dared his opponents to challenge him. "I'd love it if this were the only subject of discussion," he said...