Word: prism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Through a Western prism, Saddam's behavior appears insane: How could a man facing certain defeat and quite possibly his own annihilation choose war? Three answers are possible. One is that Saddam believes his enemies will cave in. He has said as much on innumerable occasions, and he still "seems to believe that we lack the will," says a Bush Administration expert on the Middle East. Another possibility is that Saddam honestly believes he can win. "The Americans will come here to perform acrobatics like Rambo movies," Saddam declared last Friday. "But they will find here real people to fight...
Will Saddam proceed shrewdly? Might he seize on Baker's visit to claim victory and retreat? Those who have dealt with him most closely in the past, his Arab neighbors, think not. "He believes in American weakness and sees everything through that prism," says an Egyptian official. For example, according to Administration officials, the Iraqis saw the firing of U.S. Air Force chief of staff Michael Dugan as an act that might precipitate a military coup against Bush. Similarly, Baghdad is reported to have understood the President's budget troubles, Republican setbacks in the midterm elections and even Margaret Thatcher...
Another strong feature of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black is its refusal to view Hansberry's life entirely through the prism of race relations. As the script convincingly demonstrates, problems of sexuality and artistic integrity occupy the Playwright's work as frequently as racial issues. The tension between her role as Black spokesperson and her individual identity is exposed in one scene in which characters from Hansberry's past encircle her and silence her voice with their own shouts...
Blumenthal looks at events through a catchy, pop-culture prism: Dukakis is the personification of "safe sex"; Jackson is "the Cat in the Hat." The / author is best at describing intractable topics, such as the complex origins of Bush's foreign policy. But when politics intrudes, he sometimes seems to miss the point. Blumenthal is still at pains to explain Hart's "philosophy" -- something that in the public mind boiled down to little more than unsafe sex -- and he makes no attempt to explain the self-destructive impulses involved in the Donna Rice affair. Similarly, Blumenthal accuses the Dukakis campaign...
Their answers surprised me, perhaps because we in the U.S. are tempted to see the triumph of democracy in Eastern Europe wholly through an American prism: as a triumph of American values as opposed to human values. The voices I heard in East Berlin told me this is a mistake -- presumptuous, wrongheaded, shortsighted...