Word: leveller
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rest room takes on a literary character, mainly Kafkaesque: a visitor finds the men's room down a darkened corridor on the third floor, just past the security cameras, but it's locked and a sign on the door says AFTER 5:30 USE MEN'S ROOM ON A-LEVEL...
...librarian supplies directions: take that elevator there, cross the lobby, take another elevator to A-level, and, bingo, you're there. But the second elevator has a sign on it: OUT OF SERVICE. PLEASE USE ELEVATOR AT OTHER END OF BUILDING. The stairs are handier, but they lack directional signs and so lead the uninitiated to an underground garage. Back up one flight, through a vast, empty room, into another room containing only a security desk (unattended), just in time to see the ostensibly broken elevator arrive (let's call it Kira's law: cosmic jokers all come out when...
...both economic and foreign policy issues. In this environment, small tactics and forced errors can have a large impact. Experts in offensive gambits and defensive damage control are indispensable. With no margin for error, the danger of a gaffe, a mistake that will reveal too much, induces a crippling level of scripted caution. After the feel-good placebo of the Reagan years, neither Bush nor Dukakis dares to realistically ; address such pressing questions as the $2.8 trillion national debt. Devoid of content, the campaign almost inevitably becomes a technical exercise, akin to an overcoached Super Bowl with all plays taking...
...sure, there are major differences between Bush and Dukakis in the ease with which they have adapted to the discipline of send-them-a-simple-message politics. It was the Vice President who dominated the airwaves and lowered the level of the debate with a series of irrelevant and inflammatory issues, ranging from the Pledge of Allegiance to the Massachusetts prison-furlough program. Few, however, would describe Dukakis as waging a campaign of ideas, despite a recent laudable flurry of substantive speeches on defense policy and health issues. Within a week, the Massachusetts Governor both posed...
Like an opera singer straining for a high note, Mitko Grablev opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out until the 369 1/4-lb. bar he was hoisting reached shoulder level. Then the Bulgarian weight lifter shrieked and raised the bar over his head. When the buzzer sounded, he dropped the bar on the wooden deck and cast a final look of defiance down at the weights before acknowledging the cheering crowd with a wave of his fist. He had won a gold medal...