Word: minore
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That bit of mock hard-boiled dialogue follows an episode in which Naylor is kidnapped and covered with nicotine patches. Who did it and why are questions that keep getting lost as Buckley pursues the runaway possibilities of his rich and touchy subject. But the minor mystery that keeps the plot perking is not hard to figure out: the villains can be spotted by their unawareness of their own flawed nature and a telltale need to take themselves seriously...
...Nancy held our fascination for weeks. Some see O.J. Simpson as a hero, not guilty by reason of celebrity. Others want him to be unmasked as a villain, if only because it solves this riveting murder mystery. Until a jury determines his fate, he is neither. He is a minor pop star -- a onetime running back, a rental-car salesman, a modestly gifted actor -- in big trouble. Perhaps in an age long depleted of kings, we can come no closer to Greek tragedy than Oedipus Hertz...
...first, the faint buzzing blends in with the crisp notes and trills of Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's "Prelude in C Minor." Perhaps the tape is a bad copy, or the stereo is acting up again. Then the distracting noise grows louder, more insistent, until it can no longer be dismissed as a mechanical error. In fact, it is Gould singing along with his own performance as he always did on the stage and in the recording studio. Throughout his search for technical perfection, he hummed along audibly and slightly off-key. In many ways the odd combination...
...down to size. He may have held the record for yards rushing, but he also holds it for celebrity afterlife. Only in the deflated coin of the realm would Simpson have been considered a hero. He was an athlete who turned a brilliant career running a football into a minor one flacking rental cars, sportscasting and acting. Much is made of the amiability with which he performed these duties, but accommodating fans is how a faded athlete convinces a company like Hertz to keep paying him top dollar for pushing midsize cars with unlimited mileage...
...other hand, photojournalism has never been able to claim the transparent neutrality attributed to it. Photographers choose angles and editors choose pictures to make points, after all (should President Clinton be smiling this week, or frowning?). And every major news outlet routinely crops and retouches photos to eliminate minor, extraneous elements, so long as the essential meaning of the picture is left intact. Our critics felt that Matt Mahurin's work changed the picture fundamentally; I felt it lifted a common police mug shot to the level of art, with no sacrifice to truth. Reasonable people may disagree about that...