Word: precious
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Some young women seem to believe that female self-assertion was invented around 1960. But in bygone times, plenty of housebound wives and mothers found ways to control their destinies, often while cannily seeming to submit to the menfolk. That is what happens with mounting clarity and power in Precious Sons, a rousing, historically apt and splendidly played family comedy that opened on Broadway last week...
...invited to join is recognizably A Streetcar Named Desire.) The father, who lacks a high school diploma, harangues his family about education and ambition. The mother (Judith Ivey) wants her children to choose for themselves. He makes his points with force; she wins hers with guile. Precious Sons resembles a "well-made play," much like those William Inge wrote, except that Furth emphasizes reconciliation and renewal rather than catharsis...
...often the case with well-made plays, Precious Sons is not made quite well enough. Some of its incidents seem unlikely, and its cheery ending is a rather facile reversal. But Furth creates convincing people: he gives them clever, well-wrought and wholly plausible dialogue; and he appreciates the timeless give-and-take of family life, its perilous candor and its resilience. The play evokes the temper and flavor of the years just after World War II, when economic change was the order of the day. The father went to work at a time when men could climb the corporate...
Buchanan puts no stock in the theories espoused by earlier Reagan aides like Treasury Secretary James Baker, who saw presidential prestige as a precious commodity to be expended frugally. "Presidential capital is something that can be constantly replenished," Buchanan asserted in an interview with TIME last week. "When the President goes to the wall and gives everything to win, he's strengthened for the next battle, not weakened." But what of the risk that a strategy of confrontation on aid to the contras will cost Reagan a resounding defeat? Buchanan is unconcerned. "You're strengthened by your defeats," he says...
...lobbyist can perform no greater favor for a lawmaker than to help get him elected. It is the ultimate political IOU, and it can be cashed in again and again. No other firm holds more of this precious currency than the Washington shop known as Black, Manafort...