Word: plain
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...atmosphere in the White House has changed," says Curator Clem Conger. "You can look around and see the difference." He means that literally. "The White House was a mess," Reagan told friends. Budget restraint had led to peeling paint, holes in the plaster and just plain dirt. "They [meaning the Carters] wouldn't let us do anything," said a man from General Services Administration. "That wasn't good. After all, this is the White House." Cleanup, paint-up are under...
...press has noticed that White House secretaries are pleasant when they answer the phones. That may change, but for now it is a novelty. Secret Service agents have been seen smiling. Their kind of man, both politically and personally, is back. Reagan is just plain courteous to almost everyone. "Too nice sometimes," snapped an aide. One morning the President told his staff firmly that he was getting "impatient" for a certain report. Recalled one: "That is as nasty as I have heard...
...caper makes plain that bank electronic funds-transfer systems are only as trustworthy as the people who use them. Lewis knew the procedural ropes, having earlier in his eleven years with Wells Fargo worked in the bank's computer center. Though federal officials regard Wells Fargo as a well-managed bank, some critics have wondered whether Lewis' scam went on so long in part because the bank has been adding so many branches-nine a year-that finding competent supervisors has been difficult. Cooley concedes that Lewis found "a flaw in our system." But the bank has changed...
...granted that "movements" are more a dealer's spiel than a real feature of current art, there are still affinities among artists. What are the main ones here? To begin with, realist painting-but with a twist. The plain declarative style of tonal realism, whose American master is Philip Pearlstein, is hardly in evidence, although there are some exquisitely rendered pastel studies of gray, tumblng Midwestern skies by William Beckman at the Hirshhorn, and the Whitney has some beautifully observed images by William Bailey (still life) and Rackstraw Downes (panoramic landscape). The best figurative work at the Guggenheim...
...economic oppression of the ghetto has created a vast reserve of wasted talent. There are street hustlers, criminals and a lot of plain working folk who would be at Harvard or a similar school if they had been given a chance. Considering the apparent lack of commitment to the struggles of our brothers and sisters in the slums, I wonder if we really believe that anything we face here can even compare to their day-to-day hardships. And if we think it does, can there be any other explanation than that we feel we are somehow more important...