Word: martyrizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pennsylvania in the presidential election. "In reality, though, the bet he made on McCain had no downside. If McCain had won, he would have been rewarded handsomely. But if vengeful Democrats now make an example of him, Lieberman will wear it as the ultimate badge of honor in the martyr myth he has built of himself - punished for his independence and for putting friendship above party...
...17th century, the Vatican's standards for sainthood were formalized. A non-martyr would need to have performed four posthumous miracles, usually spontaneous healings. (Today, the church requires a team of doctors to verify their veracity and prove that miraculous healings were not the result of modern medicine.) The process included two major steps: beatification, the pope's recognition that a person is worthy of consideration, which begins a lengthy investigation process; and canonization, the pope's formal recognition that a person is truly a saint. In each case the argument for sainthood would be rebutted by a Devil...
...Tower of the World Trade Center? No. Because Amis wanted to make a point. In the story, Atta’s inability to shit stands in for his inability to attain spiritual satisfaction. It is only when he boards the plane and begins to feel the satisfaction of a martyr that Atta can finally feel his bowels start to move. Religion is shit, Amis is saying, and yet he is doing it in the most insensitive way—exploiting an event that should be treated with the utmost respect and seriousness. For the depth of his understanding...
...lucidity to write passionately and unequivocally about the definitive issue of his time: the unmitigated evils of totalitarianism, in both right and left-wing guises. Solzhenitsyn, too, earned widespread acclaim as a great novelist not for any virtuosic abilities, but for the penumbra that hovered over him as a martyr to the Soviet regime. Nabokov might have had nothing but disdain for such “topical trash,” but the century’s horrors made it inevitable that writers would receive recognition as much for their moralistic projects as their literary merits. In many ways, Solzhenitsyn...
...moves at a reasonable pace, which is to say very quickly. And yes, he makes fun of paintings. The one where the Virgin Mary has her fingers outstretched? "She's talking 'bout the bloke she met last night," he says. He barely looks at a depiction of plump martyr St. Andrew as we pass. "That cross," Gervais says, "would never hold the weight." It is the first time I have spent two hours in a museum and wanted to stay longer...