Word: heroicize
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...abundance of lore about the OSS has long since surfaced: how Lawyer Bill Donovan, a heroic World War I officer, jury-rigged the intelligence agency President Franklin Roosevelt wanted by recruiting an elite of socialites (Polo Player Raymond Guest), millionaires (Paul Mellon), intellectuals (Archibald Macleish), journalists (Stewart Alsop) and performers (Sterling Hayden). How the OSS got to be twitted as "Oh-So-Social." How it nurtured such future CIA leaders as Richard Helms, Angleton and Casey...
...brink of bankruptcy. Set in 18th century Peru, it is a parable of 20th century liberation theology, of religious imperialists (the noble Jesuits) vs. economic imperialists (the venal Spanish and Portuguese). And from first scene to last, it is dead in the water--a logorrheic tale of heroic masochism in which the good guys all wear designer hair shirts...
...emotionally committed to his antibureaucratic and antilegalistic attitudes. Death Wish worked because a man was avenging the brutal death of his wife, and Rambo II worked because Stallone's character was so determined to rescue his wartime buddies from a Vietnamese prison camp. In each case, these heroic passions were sufficient to disarm--at least for the length of the film--the audience's humanistic objections to the means used to gain the desired ends. In other words, their moral fervor canceled out our moral qualms...
...Texas is big, you cannot also say that Texas is small. But if you say Texas is historically glorious, you can equally say that Texas has been ugly and mean, a nest of fire ants and rattlesnakes and men somewhat worse. If you say it is heroic, you might also point out that Sam Houston, when he lived among the Cherokees, was known as Big Drunk. If you say Texas is rich, you can also say it is desperately poor and hardscrabble, and always has been. If you say it is ruggedly individualistic, you can also say it is meritlessly...
...before and an after. The digital watch gives you precision, but leaves you wondering where you are. Analog is a return to a certain harmony that the digital world chops away. Thus analog is able to capture qualities that digital never will. Only the LP, concludes Rothstein after truly heroic experimentation, can convey, say, the piano's quality of "attack and decay...