Word: personae
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare...
Obama's political persona is also deeply bound up with youth, promise and liberation from the constraints of the past. In McCain's life, patriotism is about replicating and honoring what came before: the son and grandson of admirals becomes a war hero. In Obama's, patriotism is about escaping what came before: the grandson of an African farmer becomes the embodiment of the American Dream. If McCain's identity has been shaped largely by inherited tradition, Obama's is largely the result of personal invention, a deeply American concept. Obama chose a profession, a city, a religious identity, even...
...backfire. But it never has before. And the most enthusiastic and skilled swift-boater so far--George Bush the Elder, who built his campaign against Michael Dukakis around the Pledge of Allegiance and a furloughed convict named Willie Horton--was also someone peddling decency as part of his official persona. History shows that any candidate who relies on the voters to punish a swift-boater is going to be disappointed. People tell pollsters they are sick of nasty politics, then they respond to it every time...
Diddley also gave birth to a rock-'n'-roll persona--the baaaad man. "I walk 47 miles of barbed wire. I use a cobra snake for a necktie," he sang on Who Do You Love. Even though Diddley could sound tough, he was funnier than his peers and more progressive too, employing a series of female musicians at a time when rock was predominantly male. Despite his influence on the Rolling Stones and the Clash, Diddley was rarely credited as one of rock 'n' roll's creators--or paid like one--a fact, he admitted, that made him bitter...
...visit Iraq to observe conditions on the ground firsthand since 2006. With an eye on November, Obama is redoubling his efforts to talk to struggling working-class voters with feel-your-pain intensity and increased specificity about how he would help them as President. His man-of-the-people persona has improved lately but is still a work in progress. McCain continues to sound more like the incoherent Bob Dole than the inspirational Ronald Reagan when talking about tax cuts and the rest of his economic platform. No matter what Hillary Clinton says about healing the Democratic Party, it seems...