Word: patting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whenever Florida Republican Joe Scarborough encountered House Speaker Newt Gingrich this winter, he found himself thinking of Richard Nixon as rendered by Oliver Stone. In one scene a vehement Pat Nixon goes over to Dick and grabs him by the lapels. "Dick, you want them to love you, but they never will," she says. The conservative sophomore had wanted to tell this story to Newt for months, to convince him that efforts to make friends with moderates and liberals both in Congress and outside were wrongheaded and ill-fated. Finally Scarborough couldn't help himself: every act of Congress seemed...
There are essentially two ways of handling this hot stuff. Gingerly--oh, all right, "sensitively"--as writer Ken Hixon and director Pat O'Connor do in Inventing the Abbotts. And raunchily--oh, all right, dirty-mouthed and in your face--as writer-director Kevin Smith does in Chasing Amy. On the whole, Smith's is the better way--funnier, smarter and a lot more truthful about the whole experience of being led around by your...er, base instincts...
...sure, is less than successful. Carol has come for purely selfish reasons: "I want to know about my grade. Is that bad?" John continues speaking for a different selfish reason: to hear himself talk. But is that all he really wants? His off-color language and an attempted pat on the shoulder have convinced Carol by Act Two that she was the victim of sexual manipulation. John, to her mind, has demanded her submission to his specious, inflated academic authority...
...least, as Joseph DiGenova, a former independent counsel and U.S. Attorney in the Reagan Administration, points out, "It's another unfortunate circumstance which is unnecessarily distracting." DiGenova faults Starr too for continuing his $1-million-a-year law practice, which includes tobacco clients, and for speaking at Clinton-basher Pat Robertson's Regent University. "Ken's a fine man, but he doesn't listen to criticism. He'd be better off if he had not represented certain clients or given certain speeches," says DiGenova. "He's made another terrible mistake, and there's only so much...
...what turned out to be the unwarranted dismissal of Francine Florio-Bunten for trying to capitalize on being a juror while the trial was still going on. Florio-Bunten, who was convinced of Simpson's guilt, never wrote a book, nor tried to. Petrocelli had also learned that Pat McKenna, the defense investigator who had worked in the criminal trial, was again working for Simpson. The roil about the jury ended with the dismissal of Rosemary Carraway, the lone black juror. As it turned out, her daughter worked for the L.A. district attorney's office. A nervous Petrocelli argued...