Word: novak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They were not disappointed. Chief Delegate Michael Novak, a neoconservative scholar at Washington's American Enterprise Institute, set out to assure the parley that the U.S. was not about to abandon human rights concerns. Novak made the difference clear: rather than criticizing only rightist regimes for human rights violations-a course the Carter Administration was often accused of following at the expense of U.S. strategic interest-he gave notice that the U.S. would not tolerate the flouting of human rights in Communist regimes. "Abuse of human rights is abominable," Novak declared, "but we want the same standards applied everywhere...
Safire insists that conservatism is not a "troglodytic monolith" and that "fortunately there will be enough internal fighting" to satisfy a scrapper of his style. Just how brutish such fighting can get can be seen in a column by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak that deserves to be studied in journalism schools. Never ruminative like Will, they are columnists who air their opinions in the guise of reporting. The story they were reporting was simple enough: Reagan's new Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, wanted as his deputy Frank Carlucci, who had worked in Government with him before. Right-wingers...
Whew! A Defense Secretary soft on defense. Furthermore, Evans and Novak wrote, one William Howard Taft III "incredibly . . . has wound up on the list for the department's No. 3 post," though he has been known to confer with a Government official "whose views generally coincide with Senator George McGovern...
Right-wing infighters put out stuff like this, but why do Evans and Novak (whose column appears in 275 newspapers) send it out as their own? The language ("blossomed into panic") is as clumsy as the innuendoes are nasty. Cheap shot more suitably describes this kind of journalism...
...suspects that the mystery was just an excuse, an occasion for the writing team to get off a lot of good, if rather broad show-biz jokes. Taylor and Novak, who plays her co-star and longtime rival, have a bitchy catfight, full of gags about having two faces and two chins. Then there is Curtis as a relentlessly crass producer. "Get me the Coast!" he shouts into the phone at an uncomprehending English operator. Pause, and then an anguished yelp: "What do you mean, which coast?" But perhaps the high point of this nonsense comes when Taylor, who appears...