Word: retort
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...PHILADELPHIA, Melvoin's specialty is the rapid-fire repartee. Rubin and O'Donnell are a brilliant duo when let loose. And in a word-spitting duel like the Questions Game (where each must retort with a question), the verbal fireworks are dazzling. Chris Minkowski, a properly regal Claudius, looks like he's still savoring his triumph as last fall's production of Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. The mimed deaths of the Tragedians, choreography by David Fechtor, resemble the last writhing gasps of fish drowning in air, and coordinate well with the heavy rope-netting...
This childish and witless retort was inspired last weekend by an equally tasteless cheer ("Harvard sucks"), and while both cheer probably contain some measure of truth, the explicit elitism makes the Crimson response far more offensive. In that self-satisfying chant, students and alumni--the most enthusiastic of whom were doubtless drawn from waiting lists--showed what is worst about Harvard...
...FIRST SIDE closes with a statement of what an entertainer has to do to please his audience. The idea of "topping the last performance" becomes so taxing to the performer's imagination that in the end he is left to the mercy of the crowd. Anderson's retort to the critics is made obvious by his allusions to Passion Play, while the carnival-like refrains imply the capriciousness of a crowd that determines the musician's fate...
...author of the first three books seemed to be. The younger Anais was constantly evolving; now her world fluctuates, but her attitudes keep stable. The feverish pace to her life and record has gentled; still, its intrigue remains intact. The whole picture puts an ironic twist on the retort of an indignant reporter when Anais hauled her diaries out of a fire: "Hey, lady, next time could you bring out something more important than all those old papers? Carry some clothes on the next trip. We gotta have some human interest in these pictures...
...worst form of inequality, Aristotle argued, is to try to make unequal things equal. He held instead that "equals ought to have equality" and recalled the retort of the lions, in the fable of Antisthenes, when in the council of the beasts the hares began haranguing for equality for all. "Where," asked the lions, "are your claws and teeth?" Still, more than claws and teeth are presumed to be estimable in civilized society. This is why the undue emphasis on economic inequality in American life, which puts such a premium on acquisitiveness, is an erratic measure of individual worth...