Word: oxymoronality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...there was no such thing as a Goldwaterite. There was only Goldwater, sui generis. When the conservative movement coalesced around his candidacy, in the early '60s, conservatives still called themselves individualists, and he understood better than they did that a movement of individualists was an oxymoron. He remained an individualist, and the movement passed him by. In his last years his libertarianism hardened. He came out for gay rights, including in the military, and opposed controls on abortion. When Republicans attacked President Clinton about Whitewater, Goldwater told them to "get off his back and let him govern...
...Soviets found to their chagrin that "reform communism" is an oxymoron, and since coercion and state terror were the only gluing mechanism of the USSR, any reform experiment meant to give their socialism a "human face" was bound to destroy the very pillars of that system. It was the Czechs' and Slovaks' attempts to make sense of an alien ideology during 1968, however, and its eventual crushing by Soviet hardware, that infected the Soviet Union's politics 20 years later, leading to the sensational death of a bloody tyranny...
...moderate Iranian leader? to most Americans, that's an oxymoron. And President Mohammed Khatami didn't do much to change it in his ballyhooed interview with CNN last week. His style was genial, all right, but his policies were rigid. Everything was America's fault, he insisted. The U.S. was hostile, trying to dominate Iran and giving "unbridled support" to Israel, "a racist terrorist regime." He saw no need for resuming political ties with Washington, and felt that Iran would do just fine working with the Europeans and others "who are far more advanced in their foreign policies than...
...profit health care is an oxymoron," he added. "We [the committee] do not propose to go back to fee-for-service care, but we do advocate an end to market-driven health insurance, first in Massachusetts and then on a national level...
Well, all of that is true except for the last part. But the oxymoron of Ivy League football has not escaped my thoughts since then. This year we made history by defeating all seven of our Ivy league opponents for the first time, and congratulations are in order for Coach Tim Murphy and all of the players on the team who devoted their time to the effort. Harvard defied all expectations this year and beside probably having wiped the dust off the donation coffers of several alumni, this year's success has lent new credibility to the heavy athletic recruitmemt...