Word: lameness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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REAGAN may be a lame duck president, but he still wields an enormous ability to affect national opinion. His justification for not enforcing civil rights laws and for vetoing this newest piece of legislation has been that these laws are no longer necessary or effective. Some are convinced. Over and over again, Reagan's actions have demonstrated his belief that the market system should rule all--that people should be completely free to discriminate on any basis, for any purpose...
...expression of the anti-gravitas America of the late '80s, a place that can seem weightless and evanescent, as forgetful as a television screen. Gravitas, a deep moral seriousness, is not necessarily the virtue for an electronic age. And yet Reagan possesses a gravitas of authenticity. In any case, lame ducks always suffer from diminished gravitas. People don't take them as seriously as before, when the days of power lay ahead...
...limitations of an earlier era. It was youth made manifest. But neither youth nor rebellion can be sustained forever, the only fertile soil for revolution is oppression, and after the 30 permissive years of the rock 'n' roll era, the soil has been leached of grounds for uprising; only lame and stunted weeds can sprout in the once-rich humus...
...lame-duck days of the Roman Empire, barbarian tribes frequently jostled one another as they trundled across the Eurasian landmass. Sometimes the stronger would displace the weaker, sometimes they would wage war among themselves, and occasionally there was a process of cooperation and mutual assimilation. And so it has been with the various factions that seek to control the turf of America's political parties. New tribes wander in and displace older ones, struggling every now and then to capture the soul of their party. Only rarely does a leader come along who can smother factional rivalries and give definition...
These are real groaners, which is to say, exactly what Pudding audiences are after. Unfortunately, Saint Misbehavin' doesn't deliver the inside Harvard humor of past theatricals. The obligatory Wellesley gag-which I wouldn't give away if it weren't so lame-comes when the evil Nurse Dwyer threatens to send Emmanuelle Leighbor (Carl "B.J." Fox)-the subtly played, airheaded nurse who elsewhere calls flowers "the most beautiful things on God's earth"-back to a certain Route 30 finishing school...