Word: popularized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Beginning last spring, Beijing mandated a new push to decontrol the prices of such commodities as popular-brand cigarettes and liquor. Prices were allowed to rise from artificially low levels, often set as far back as the 1950s, to whatever the market would bear. But the plan covered only about half of all commodity prices. The rest, including those of such agricultural staples as rice and other grains, have generally remained fixed under the old rules. This two-tier approach has led to some economic absurdities: farmers, for example, must buy fertilizer at high, decontrolled prices but sell their grain...
...approach poses a dilemma for Deng, Zhao and other reformers. Not only does the change of course expose popular fears of the market-oriented direction that the economy is taking but it also underscores the leadership's inability to force the middle levels of the party bureaucracy to administer the reforms. Referring to the pragmatic Zhao's victory over conservatives in winning the party leadership a year ago, a Western economic analyst summed up, "The leaders confused the fact that they no longer had political opposition with the illusion that the country was ready for such fundamental reforms...
...state television system responded to Gorbachev's call for perestroika by adding four more hours of programming each day to the two national channels. You can stay up late; you can get up early. A morning show called 90 Minutes proved so popular that it soon expanded to 120 Minutes. Now collective-farm workers can turn on their sets and get an update on how the harvest is faring in the Volgograd district. For prurient relief, they can watch music videos of East German TV dancers, slinking about in peekaboo sequined costumes...
Part of the reason is that disqualifications have primarily been confined to other, less popular sports -- especially weight lifting and field events, like the hammer throw and shot put. But much of the shock is a by-product of the fascination with the 100-meter dash. That most elemental, primordial event is run, at least in the mind, by almost every child on earth, and its Olympic champion occupies a place of honor as the fastest man alive. He is the heir of Harold Abrahams of Chariots of Fire fame, of Jesse Owens, Bob Hayes and Carl Lewis. What other...
...Dukakis administration could do much to solve these problems. But if he is elected without the type of philosophical grounding Reagan presented in 1980, he lacks a popular mandate for his agenda. And if the standard-bearer of the major American political party most associated with liberalism refuses to affirm those values, they may cease to exist as a prominent political force...