Word: idealizations
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Marlon Brando's emergence in the early '50s registered a drastic change in the cultural weather. The masculine ideal reflected in the Hollywood mirror had been basically suave and gentlemanly. Brando, who grew up middle class, Midwestern and Wasp, radiated pure working-class alienation -- an inarticulate promise of danger, sex and social abrasion. Which is why, as TIME film critic Richard Schickel tells us in BRANDO: A LIFE IN OUR TIMES (Atheneum; $21.95), he was a mythic presence for all the young urban professionals of the '50s. Rude but sensitive, rough but anguished, Brando was their version of pastoral...
Such nautical chivalry, however, began only in Victorian times. Previously, women were tossed overboard in emergencies so that men could have a greater supply of rations. The modern ideal has its own rough edges. On the Titanic, "women and children first" was enforced by guns. "Children" often excluded little boys, who were expected to be little men. And immigrant women and children in steerage didn't qualify for the noblesse oblige above decks...
When old coherences break down, civilities and tolerances fall away as well. So does an ideal of self-reliance and inner autonomy and responsibility. The new tribes, strident and anxious and dogmatic, push forward to impose a new order. Yet they seem curiously faddish, unserious: youth culture unites with hypochondria and a childish sense of entitlement. Long ago, Carry Nation actually thought the U.S. would be better off if everyone stopped drinking. The busybodies today worry not about their society but about themselves -- they imagine that they would be beautiful and virtuous and live forever, if only you would...
...deadlines for early editions of the New York Times and Washington Post had passed. The public galleries in the Senate chamber were deserted, and only a couple of reporters lingered in the press room. Surveying the emptiness last Wednesday night, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia decided conditions were ideal for the Senate to hand itself a whopping pay raise. As if by magic, 98 of the 100 Senators appeared out of the night to vote, 53 to 45, to raise their annual salaries from $101,900 to $125,100 -- an increase of nearly...
Still, this was the eclipse that came to the astronomers, the first in modern times to pass directly over a world-class observatory. Despite less than ideal conditions, most of the Mauna Kea scientists were elated by what they had observed. John Jefferies, who helped oversee three separate projects, said the findings would forever change earthlings' view of their star...