Word: moral
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mind reels: Lucianne Goldberg, moralizer? Hearing her discourse on moral rot, you realize the extent to which the scandal of 1998 was an extension of her--not simply in its mechanics but in its tone and flavor. "Everything is gossip," she likes to say, and who, having lived through the Lewinsky scandal, can doubt her? The scandal was a gossip's dream--and a moralist's too. For a solid year we were all part of Lucianne's phone network, and the media culture was remade in her image. Our giddy appetite for gossip--for chicanery and sexual indiscretion...
...month period of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky are self-incriminating, an eloquent and chilling record of ongoing personal treachery. What is surprising is how many contemporary Americans find Tripp's conduct as hellish as Dante would have. We live at a far remove from the medieval poet's moral cosmology. Where he prescribed eternal damnation and torture, we are inclined to recommend therapy, to empathize, to view the malefactor as a victim...
...what is that something we learned? Poor Sally Quinn had her head chopped off for trying to explain, in the Washington Post, why Washington was so outraged by the President's behavior. Her bold suggestion that Washington has moral standards offended almost everybody. An equally intriguing question is why the rest of the country hasn't been outraged. The easy explanation--so easy that someone (me, unfortunately) raced early on to offer it in these pages--is that we've become sophisticated or decadent (take your pick), like the French...
...Private Ryan, the flinty, competent G.I.s have a clear mission. The Thin Red Line, from James Jones' 1962 novel, is about military and moral chaos. Its infantrymen are scared and unprepared for the hilltop assault that consumes most of the film. (The Japanese are scared...
...enemies, but his daring, concluding rescue of an imperiled child--this time the setting is an exploding amusement park, not a flaming orphanage--effectively stirs both suspense and sentiment. This Christmas you could do worse than introduce the kids to the big Furby, one who carries a certain moral weight very lightly...