Word: patronism
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...films offer the viewer one thing at a time to look at, one emotion to feel. A dyna-movie demands more; the eye must search every corner of the film frame for glancing gags. Look closely in the villain's lair in RoboCop 2 and find effigies of his patron saints: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Elvis, Oliver North. Listen hard to Gremlins 2 and catch witty details about zillionaire Daniel Clamp's cable empire. It includes 24-hour channels devoted to archery and laundry, and a movie channel featuring "Casablanca, but with color -- and a happier ending." Gremlins 2 should carry...
...darkness a 40-ft. wall of water had risen in Wegee Creek, which is usually ankle deep, and was rolling toward them. It hit with enough force to knock frame houses off their foundations, carry mobile homes downstream and buckle the concrete walls of a tavern. One patron was carried away by the water; another survived by clinging to a bar stool. Not far away, the onrushing water smashed into the house of Robert and Rose Ramsey, crushing the woman...
...aims to dominate the Arab world, the Iraqi leader is reclusive and aloof. He has not traveled outside the Arab world since 1985, and rarely grants interviews. Despite a feverish cult of personality, little is known about his habits or tastes beyond the image he cultivates as a patron of music and poetry. Those outside his tightly controlled inner circle have little sense of the humorless man who hides behind bombastic statements and paternalistic visits to the countryside...
...richer ironies of Soviet political life that Gorbachev initially served as Yeltsin's patron and mentor. During the 1970s, Yeltsin was party secretary of Sverdlovsk (pop. 1.4 million), 850 miles east of Moscow, and thus came to know Gorbachev, his counterpart in the city of Stavropol. When Gorbachev became party secretary in charge of agriculture in 1978, the friendship blossomed; whenever the two met, Yeltsin later related, "we would embrace warmly." In 1985 Gorbachev tapped him to be the clean broom needed to sweep out the corruption in the Moscow city party organization. Yeltsin handled the task with such verve...
...nice diversion: a punitive hullabaloo, casting the NEA as the patron, if not of Commies, then of blasphemers, elitists and sickos. The arts grant becomes today's version of the Welfare Queen's Cadillac. And if the NEA is trashed or even dismantled in the process, so much the better: it only shows that the post-Reagan right still has teeth...