Word: icon
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Moscow kitchen workers, soldiers and maids waited in long lines at hotels to snap up costly and usually unavailable religious books, medals and icon reproductions. At the celebrated 14th century monastic center at Zagorsk, 40 miles northeast of Moscow, the crowds and food stalls lent a carnival air. An aged woman who had come from Leningrad said, "I'm no longer afraid to tell people I'm a Christian," as tears streamed down her cheeks. A young mother held the hands of her two youngsters and remarked, "I hope they can wear their crosses with pride...
...central icon of this singular faith is, inevitably, Mickey Mouse, whose unfailing perkiness and elder-statesmouse status (recently celebrated in a 17- ; day 59th birthday party) assure him success in a culture that has respect for old age and a soft spot for the cute. The little fellow's image is everywhere in Japan -- on Mitsubishi bankbooks, in framed photos within Zen temples, even on Emperor Hirohito's wristwatch. "Mickey Mouse is an actor," explains the slogan on the cover of a Mickey Mouse diary, "and as such he can do anything; he can play any role...
...natives" as legitimate expenses; it waited until 1964 before permitting men and women to eat together in its main cafeteria. Still, the society's flagship, the yellow- bordered National Geographic magazine, which is now distributed in 167 countries, eventually came to rival Mom and apple pie as an American icon. Before skin flicks and magazines became commonplace, National Geographic offered generations of boys their first opportunity to ogle bare-breasted women -- though the breasts were almost always African or Asian, rarely Caucasian. Even today the magazine is squirreled away each month like precious treasure by many of the society...
...anyone doubted that the Bruce icon had become more puffed up than the well-muscled man behind it, they need only have recalled the comic-relief point of the 1984 presidential campaign when Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan quibbled over which side of the ballot the Boss was on. (Springsteen, to his credit, refused to comment). And when the message of the title song got jumbled from vehement Vietnam-vet outrage to raucous jingoism, it was clear that enough was enough...
True, some mercenary flights manage to offend. Judith Campbell Exner tastelessly trod on a national icon in My Story, the tale of her sexual adventures with President John F. Kennedy and Gangster Sam Giancana. Putative Aristocrat Sydney Biddle Barrows' best-selling book The Mayflower Madam -- and the forthcoming TV movie -- raises the grating spectacle of a woman thumbing her nose at the system that convicted her of promoting prostitution...