Word: moment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There was a comical moment in the front row at a recent runway show in Paris when two magazine editors in sharply tailored jackets had to pivot awkwardly in their seats to make room for their linebacker shoulder pads. Not since Tess McGill suited up to outwit her boss in Working Girl in 1988 have big shoulders played such a prominent role in fashion. For fall, designers like Michael Kors, Donna Karan and Stefano Pilati of Yves Saint Laurent showed structured jackets, enlisting the signature '80s power tool to try to give shaky consumers some self-assurance--and, they hope...
Patience requires a bit of distance, so let's stand back for a moment. Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, had proved itself bankrupt. Reaganism was distinguished by four characteristics--at least, according to its own mythology: the belief that government was "the problem" and so less of it was better, tax-cutting (for the wealthy), deregulation and an insistence on military strength as the primary projection of American authority overseas. These were, in some cases, fantasy attributes: After lowering taxes in 1981, Reagan raised them...
...like that to get the popular rage under control. As it is, guilt and anger are being splashed about chaotically and inefficiently--and people like Barack Obama, who had nothing at all to do with the creation of this mess, are being blamed. That is very dangerous at a moment when there is a desperate need for patience and rationality...
...There are columns to fill, commentaries to spew even when a new Administration has just begun its work and it is way too early to make definitive judgments about its policies. The worst judgments I've made as a journalist were the result of impatience. In early 1993--a moment not unlike this one--I joined the mob jumping all over the unseemly sausage-making that attended Bill Clinton's economic plan. Firmly fixated on twigs and branches--not even trees!--I missed the forest: Clinton's budget discipline led to the economic boom of the 1990s...
...9/11 was supposed to usher in the end of irony? That didn't happen either. All the same, is it too much to hope that a stricken world might have more time for art that's less declamatory and cocksure? If it does, this will be a very good moment for William Kentridge, anguished moralist...