Word: popularity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...novel, in fact, begins with a big bang: the blowing up, by Sikh terrorists, of a jumbo jet, Flight AI-420 from Bombay to London, at 29,002 feet over the English Channel. Two passengers, cartwheeling and conversing, plummet earthward. One is Gibreel Farishta, India's most popular movie star, who is in disguise and fleeing his fame after suffering a life-threatening illness and discovering in the process that there is no God. The other is Saladin Chamcha, a prosperous performer of voice-overs for commercials on British television, returning to his adopted land after a melancholy visit...
...Conservatives are finding it much easier to rally popular vocal support for deregulation of the legal profession. Thatcher's plan calls for abolishing the traditional division between solicitors, who deal directly with the public, and barristers, who must be "instructed" by solicitors before taking on a case and who have a virtual monopoly on presenting cases in high court. Under the government's proposal, any lawyer would be free to present cases in court after obtaining a "certificate of competence." Many consumer-interest groups and solicitors cheered the plan, while barristers promised to fight...
...Paraguay's future course is far from certain. In the hours after the coup, citizens ventured into the streets, scarcely able to believe Stroessner's demise and encouraged by Rodriguez's rhetoric pledging "the initiation of democratization." But while Rodriguez is popular with his troops, his lengthy association with Stroessner casts doubt on his claims. His style of high living is attributed to heavy involvement in Paraguay's large-scale smuggling and drug trade. As a U.S. intelligence analyst put it, "He's been a 30-year intimate of the old man. He's not going to reinvent the wheel...
...right from the start of his public career. As the late critic Harold Rosenberg put it, he was "the figure of the artist as nobody, though a nobody with a resounding signature." This subverted the romantic stereotype of the artist -- hot, involved, grappling with fate and transcendence -- that American popular culture, and hence most American collectors, had boiled down from Van Gogh and Pollock...
...These days, though, many eyeware outlets look like a cross between Romper Room and a video arcade. Colorful blocks, spinning charts, precarious balance beams and computerized gizmos with flashing lights all vie for the eye's attention. The games and gadgetry are the tools of "vision therapy," an increasingly popular but controversial program that aims at making the eye as quick as the hand through exercise and training...