Word: mensch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...interesting than just that event. For a brief, hilarious season early on, at Columbia University, he campaigned for the 1920 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Calvin Coolidge; but in the mid-'20s he pinballed leftward and joined the Communist Party, animated by an anguished convert's zeal. A melodramatically ernste Mensch (serious man), as he liked to say, Chambers began as a useful party "literate," hacking away as a foreign-news reporter for the dreary Daily Worker, contributing to the New Masses...
...also wants to be How Nice. Stern hopes to be "understood"--as a caring husband, a faithful friend, a mensch for all seasons. Don Rickles did this for decades, of course, insulting his listeners before sucking up to them (I hate you! Love me!). Stern just does it on radio. Maybe he really cares for his audience as much as he does for his wife. In the movie he expresses that love by making radio jokes about her miscarriage and telling a woman who's about to strip in his studio that Alison died of cancer. Yeah, Howard. Love...
...Maybe these Harvardians should not be so star-struck," Ms. Rose high-mindedly intones, perhaps forgetting that elsewhere in her own article she refers to Mr. Hanks--with whom she has presumably interacted only through his brief press conference--as a "delightful mix of thoughtfulness and winning verve," a "mensch," and a "doll" who may be the "one nice guy left in Hollywood" (Ms. Rose has presumably met all the other guys in Hollywood--hey, she's a Crimson editor). Did Mr. Hanks behave well? You bet! He "was all grace and charm" as he "performed admirably," "sidestepped any awkwardness...
...Pudding receives fabulous PR dividends on the tradition of Man of the Year. Does Hanks get an equal return out of the evening? He dances for us on a toy piano while some Pudding producer steals the show. He's too much of a mensch to hit his Oscar competition with a handful of darts, preferring instead to nail a rendition of "that King George guy." He wears a dress. He watches undergraduate men dress up like women and sing. How is this possibly appealing to Tom Hanks...
...kids in ! the lesson of man's inhumanity to man -- and of one man's humanity. To Michel Friedman, a child of Schindlerjuden and a leader in Frankfurt's Jewish community, Schindler's importance was not that he was a hero but that he was a human being: "a Mensch," says Friedman, using a good German and Yiddish word. "He is proof that if you wanted to help, even in 1944, even in Auschwitz, you could." And the response to Schindler's List is proof that the most offensive word in any language is forget...