Word: kerner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That may be because it smacks of deja vu. What the proposal inevitably brought to mind was the 1968 Kerner Commission, probably the most famous government panel after the Warren Commission. Formed to examine why riots had hit more than a dozen American cities in the mid-1960s, it famously prophesied the world we verge on: "Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal...
What caused this reversal? The main impetus was violence. In 1966 and 1967, hundreds of riots exploded in cities across America, culminating in the violence following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. The Kerner Commission, appointed to discover the roots of these riots, concluded that the government had to implement nothing less than extraordinary measures to improve the lot and quell the growing resentment of Blacks. The reported warned of "the feelings of desperation and anger which breed civil disorders...
...Kerner commission recommended "a comprehensive approach designed to reconstruct the ghetto child's social and intellectual environment, compensate for disadvantages already suffered and provide necessary tools for development of essential literary skills." But policymakers, strapped for money and short on time, rejected the comprehensive approach and opted for a quick and dirty...
...believes that Kerner is their agent; the English think he's a double agent working for them. He could be a triple or, as he says, "maybe & quintuple." Like many tales of espionage, Hapgood is an onion-like construction: the author peels back a layer of threats, uncertainties, possible betrayals only to reveal another. It's such an elaborate process, you can almost forget that what you wind up with is an onion: something savory and shapely but rather slight. Which is to say, Hapgood isn't quite Stoppard in highest flight. And which is also to say, even...
...uniformly able. Stockard Channing, as the self-denying British agent Elizabeth Hapgood, does all she can, with her crisp high-heeled pacing, to delimit the boundaries of her role, but there's something a little frustratingly soft -- in the text -- at her center. As played by David Strathairn, Kerner is more convincing as a scientist than as a squelched lover; there's something slightly too predictable -- too projectable, as Kerner the mathematician might say -- about his twitchings and jerkings when sentiment gets the better...