Word: littleton
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...paper looks impressive (one of mankind's most important words, invested with the dignity of mystery and theology). But evil in actuality, when it touches down on earth like a tornado for a moment--as it did in Weston's visit to the Capitol, or last week in Littleton--may have a style so tacky, so moronic or so indelibly crazy that it gives off a radiant tabloid weirdness. This almost novelistic sheen of the loony makes the tragedies curiously hard to evaluate. The evil effect is evident--innocent blood everywhere; the cause, in the case of Littleton anyway, remains...
...activist liberal, a voluptuary of governmental solutions, so his concession carries an interesting significance. You saw it from the political right too. "There's not a magic wand you can wave," said Gary Bauer, a conservative activist who coincidentally launched his presidential campaign the day after the Littleton murders. Even Pat Buchanan, after firing off a few half-hearted rounds at the "poison of our popular culture," could offer little more than a shake of the head. "There was something sick and wrong inside those boys," he said. "I don't know how to stop...
This is something new in American politics, but it didn't start with Littleton. It has been in train for many months or maybe longer, and it crosses party lines. A bipartisan consensus--that holy grail of establishmentarians everywhere--has been reached that politicians can no longer concern themselves merely, even primarily, with the workaday stuff of politics: marginal tax rates, crime control, defense expenditures, environmental and labor laws, the international balance of power. Our politicians are transcending politics. They are turning their attention, for better or for worse, to matters of the human heart...
...country watched Littleton last week, we seemed to be hurtling toward a National Moment, a late-'90s version of, say, the sinking of the Maine, or the Kent State shootings during Vietnam, or Rock Hudson's death. These moments can be dangerous, as such soul searching quickly turns into lawmaking. History may remember last week because of what happens in the next few weeks, so let's try to get it right...
...might go ahead and dismiss a few of the too tiny suggestions (those mesh backpacks you keep hearing about still carry guns--just stinky ones wrapped in gym clothes) as well as the too big ones (Ohio Representative James Traficant used Littleton to try to revive the idea of prayer in schools, which the Supreme Court has ruled illegal about 38 times). But what about New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman's proposal to spend $10 million turning schools into little fortresses, with security better than that at the nuclear lab in his state? Or more gun control, as New York...