Word: inventive
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...entrusted with protecting the public weal, can also undermine it. And not surprisingly, since they are based on an illusory faith in the redemptive power of institutional arrangements. Owing to their history, Americans suffer from this touching superstition more than most people. After all, the founding fathers did practically invent the separation of powers to prevent the accumulation of tyrannical power. That lucky stroke has predisposed Americans to believe that if they could only find the right law, the right oversight committee, the right disclosure form, they could compensate institutionally for other failings of the human heart. And produce ethics...
...were "offended" by the fact that he was paid about $180,000 in "expenses" for his participation in the De Lorean and other investigations. While criminal witnesses are a "necessary evil," Weitzman believes "they have gotten out of hand; these people are given a license to fabricate and invent...
...beliers, the Bible-beliers, the free-marketers, the right-to-lifers--grouped under the aegis of less government. Thus the Republicans, as Rothenberg points out, have a luxury the Democrats don't--a simplistic unifying theme. The way to fight this is not through trying to invent new-ideologies, but to recognize that there are a host of good ideas in the party, get people to talk about them, and try to work out some compromises--keeping in mind the party's moral obligation to the sick and the poor. The "family of America" theme that New York Gov. Mario...
Throughout On the Yankee Station, Boyd's aspiring lechers either vent or invent grievances all the way from California to France and from Africa to Viet Nam. Yet however exotic the horizon, the foreground is always grungy. The sea along the Côte d'Azur is "filled with weed and feces from an untreated sewage outlet"; Cameroon is "a stinking, sweaty country," of insects and imbroglios; California beaches are littered with derelicts and bums; and just about everywhere, there are washed-out blonds in greasy cafés or easy women who turn out to be hard...
Altering facts to achieve a dramatic narrative is a legacy of the New Journalism, which was popularized in magazines and books in the 1960s and '70s and has been increasingly criticized. New Journalists may merge characters or invent scenes. They sometimes reconstruct sequences based on interviews with third parties rather than participants, and even claim to know what people were thinking. Clay Felker, when he was running New York magazine, edited out Gail Sheehy's explanation in an article that a prostitute, Red-pants, was a composite because, he says, "I thought it slowed the story down...