Word: nixonize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...walls and furniture gleam with the silver-framed pageant of their photogenic tribal progress. Ronald Reagan's weight room in the White House seemed wistfully egotistical, decorated on the theme of himself, with movie posters of himself and the TIME Man of the Year cover illustration of himself. Richard Nixon wanted to outfit his White House guard in elaborate Graustarkian uniforms, a tinhorn spectacle of power, but was embarrassed out of the idea. Patton, too, was a great one for designing gaudy special uniforms for himself and his troops. George C. Scott's "Patton" was Nixon's favorite movie...
...Nixon's real hero, whom he quoted on that last day in the White House, was Teddy Roosevelt. We should be grateful that the peacemaking statesman in Nixon triumphed over the ghost of TR, who said: "No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war." Presidents are as complex as the rest...
...sorry" applies. Any sign of contrition was sufficient, because in the end both sides need to move on to more important questions. And besides, creative ambiguity has always been at the center of U.S.-China relations. Did the U.S. actually accept Beijing's "One China" policy back in the Nixon days, recognizing China and Taiwan as part of the same entity? Well, the English phrase was "acknowledge," but the Chinese translation was chegren, implying acceptance...
...mostly semantics. The present standoff between the United States and China over the downed spy plane is all about lexical boundaries - which a-words ("apology") are taboo, which r-words ("regret") are insufficient, which s-words ("sorry") are being broached. It's no accident that former Nixon speechwriter and foreign-policy maven William Safire is now a usage columnist for the New York Times...
...serves as both an affirmation and a critique of modern American values. The show focuses on the period from 1956 to 1968 - that exuberant era between victory in World War II and defeat in Vietnam, between the bland complacency of the Eisenhower years and the twitchy paranoia of Nixon's divided nation. It was a time of prosperity and materialism that embraced such pop-cultural Meccas as Las Vegas and Disneyland, and engendered a cornucopia of brand-name goods and futuristic gadgets. The widespread use of plastics created sleek, brightly colored designs for even the most banal household items - from...