Word: homely
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Thursday, 7.9 million people in Britain headed home or found alternative berths from which to switch on the BBC's late-night weekly politics show, almost three times the program's normal viewership and around half of the total TV audience for the 10:35 p.m. slot. They were drawn like moths by a fiery controversy over the BBC's decision to invite Nick Griffin, the leader of the extremist British National Party, to join the debate. The taxi driver was determined to share his opinions on the matter, no matter that his passenger was dreamily communing with her iPod...
...important that they should sometimes be able to hear and interrogate politicians from the relative fringes as well as from the mainstream," wrote Mark Thompson, the BBC's Director General, in an eve-of-transmission exegesis of BBC policy published in the Guardian newspaper. Britain's Home Secretary Alan Johnson disagreed strongly. The invitation "gives [the BNP] a legitimacy they do not deserve," Johnson, appearing on Question Time a week ahead of Griffin, told the show's host, David Dimbleby. (Read: "Should Bigoted Speech Be Free? A Debate in Britain...
...Maradona, who turns 49 next week and is already a grandfather, is revered at home for leading Argentina to historic victories on the soccer field, particularly winning the 1986 World Cup. That was also the tournament in which he exacted a symbolic revenge for Argentina's defeat by Britain in the 1982 Falklands War by scoring two goals to sink England, the first illegally with a concealed fist that he wryly attributed to "the hand of God", and the second following a sublime run from the halfway line leaving the England defense for dead...
...soccer icon certainly thrives on confrontation, especially with the press. Whether it is firing a compressed-air rifle at pesky journalists outside his home (he struck four and received a three-year suspended sentence a few years ago) or, as he did last week, hurling verbal abuse at them in a press conference after the meager victory against Uruguay. "You can suck it, keep on sucking it," a triumphant but spiteful Maradona spat out at journalists who had dared criticize his coaching skills...
...Still, nobody would bet against Maradona once again bouncing back. He has survived protracted periods of self-destructive frenzy, through cocaine abuse and run-ins with the law. He has survived heart attacks brought on by substance abuse and over-eating, and he was sent home from the 1994 World Cup after failing a doping test. Argentines love him as both triumphant hero and luckless martyr...