Word: instantly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ours is a plastic, throw-away culture. In the perpetual quest for instant gratification--fast food, heart-stopping entertainment, efficient government--we tend to endorse and abolish in grand swaths, with a flick of the wrist, a snap of the fingers and little thought. We love McDonald's french fries for their perfectly consistent thickness and temperature, Schwarzenegger because he produces a constant stream of adrenaline, and a congressperson who stays out of trouble and agrees with us on everything...
Still unthinking, for those things which do not give us an instant buzz, our patronage turns to treachery. In these cases, if one child displeases us, we suggest massacring the entire family. If the present tenants of a house are distasteful, we knock the house down...
...which address the problems of the current royals while preserving the richness of a constitutional monarchical government. The first is to keep Queen Liz et al. in their present place, and serialize their trials and tribulations on BBC-1. In many ways the royals do satisfy our need for instant gratification--so why not acknowledge it and give them their own television series? "Melrose Place" and "90210" will finally have some stiff competition. After all, as the Economist points out, even Bagehot conceded that to expect the sovereign always to be "virtuous [is] not rational...
That November, George Romney, a Republican, won his first of three terms as Michigan's Governor, and his son, then a high school sophomore, learned first-hand about the perks of public office--including instant fame...
Suddenly, as the instant replay starts, you realize that one of the teams is wearing crimson uniforms that look awfully familiar...