Word: peculiarities
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ever since Ulysses S. Grant informed the commander of the Confederate forces at Vicksburg that he would "accept no terms except immediate and unconditional surrender," Americans have had a peculiar obsession with total victory at any cost. Without favoring appeasement, it is still possible to favor exhausting all possibilities for a peaceful settlement before we consider fighting...
History keeps its own peculiar rhythms, sometimes rewarding the lowly and punishing the mighty with a brutal speed that leaves spectators gasping. Once imprisoned playwrights suddenly become Presidents (witness Vaclav Havel); dictators suddenly become jailed pariahs (witness Erich Honecker, among others). And sometimes history conspires to undo a leader who had so completely embodied the spirit of the times that she seemed destined to govern forever...
Stripped of its pious rhetoric, Muldoon argues, the council's resolution amounts to a "condemnation of the entire history of the modern world." As such, it represents a peculiar form of intellectual masochism, selectively judging the past by the imperfect standards of the present. Moreover, even sweeping apologies for historical sins are unlikely to satisfy the angry advocates of belated justice for Native Americans, some of whom would settle for nothing less than canceling the festivals entirely...
Students of White House culture have begun to notice a peculiar strain of what might be called the Las Vegas syndrome. First, UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian turned up in the Oval Office for a Bush handshake. Then Siegfried and Roy, the lion tamers and Strip headliners, also appeared in the President's office. Finally, during a Bush campaign stopover in Rochester, Minn., who should pop out of nowhere to sing the national anthem but Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton. The odd sightings can all be traced to Sigmund Rogich, the President's events coordinator, who grew up dirt...
Each morning before breakfast this administrator--commonly known as the "Menu Man"--updates the culinary recordings in the peculiar inflected voice that undergraduates have come to count on to warn them of the day's dining hall fare...