Word: monumentalizing
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...LeMond, 25, became the first non-European to win the premier race in this most passionately parochial of Old World sports. And the easygoing American did it by triumphing in a fratricidal war with his teammate --and friend--Bernard Hinault, 31, who has become a two-wheeled French national monument. Over 2,542 miles, traversing 76 mountains and hills in the Pyrenees and Alps, covering as much as 160 miles a day in the flats, the two played out a drama of betrayal and reconciliation, and after more than 110 hours of racing in 23 days, just three minutes...
...Statue of Liberty? By modern high-rise standards, it is dinky, a dozen stories from head to toe. And by the standards of statuary, Lady Liberty is absurdly huge, unnecessarily literal, a giant trinket as vulgar as a sign on the Las Vegas strip. It is hardly an ancient monument. Except for Richard Morris Hunt's pedestal, the thing was not even Made in America. (Perfect protectionist irony: an imported patriotic icon...
Anonymous pain vs. heroic pizazz, a crucible vs. a crowd pleaser. A low, labyrinthine, long-abandoned Government compound and a high, bright, popular symbol. The place where the undesirables among the huddled masses were culled out and sent packing; the monument that summarizes in one grand, gilded-age stroke a nation's noblest intentions. The two islands make a compelling yin- and-yankee pair. Alone, neither the Mother of Exiles nor the Island of Tears fairly represents the American story. But together, they tell something like the whole truth...
...Park Flack Tom Adkinson, "you'd better be about music." But not just country music: Opryland's 120 acres embrace doo-wop and Duke Ellington in as many as a dozen simultaneous stage shows. Then it's 20 miles northeast to Hendersonville and a stop at Twitty City, the monument Country Star Conway Twitty has built to himself, including a guided tour conducted by a giant mechanical Twitty Bird. (Just down the road is Johnny Cash's House of Cash, a museum that is proud to display Al Capone's favorite chair.) The next day you'll tool eastward...
...coffee shops, like Googies, serving 24 hours a day, greasy spoons with super-duper production values and plenty of room. Meanwhile, out in the suburbs and on numberless freeways, the hamburger stand became pandemic. Hess calls Ships, a Googie imitator built in 1958 and demolished in 1984, "the major monument of Coffee Shop Modern," where "Fred Flintstone and George Jetson could meet over a cup of coffee." The descendants include Big Boy, Denny's and Sambo's. From 1950 to 1960, years of heedless American growth, cars multiplied and the great fast-food empires were born: McDonald's, Tastee Freez...