Word: retrospective
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Larry O'Keefe seems to agree: "I think that if there was a major in drama there would be a lot more segregation between the people who do it for fun and people who do it because it's what they study. In retrospect, I don't think I would have opted for a drama major either, although I was all for it at that time. Harvard makes you find some real substance in a liberal arts major in addition to doing drama. The bad thing is that a lot of people graduate from Harvard expecting to be actors...
...history professor named Alfred L. Clayton receives a request from the Northern New England Association of American Historians. Would he jot down his "memories and impressions" of the Gerald R. Ford Administration (1974-77) for possible inclusion in the association's triquarterly journal, Retrospect? Well, would he ever. In fact, Clayton is prodded into such an orgy of reminiscence that he produces a manuscript almost diabolically unsuited to academic publication. That, according to the clever premise of John Updike's 15th novel, is why Clayton's ramblings must occupy a book of their...
...itself slightly risible -- and what he actually does, which is to tell the NNEAAH exactly what he was thinking, writing, feeling and doing during the roughly 2 1/2 years in question. And he lets his interrogators know, early on, that he wants to do it his own way: "((Retrospect editors: Don't chop up my paragraphs into mechanical 10-line lengths. I am taking your symposium seriously, and some thoughts will run long as rivers in thaw, and others will snap off like icicles. Let me do the snapping, please...
...prewar Iraq policy on autopilot. The Administration had a big investment in its belief that Saddam -- whom Bush called "worse than Hitler" after the invasion -- could be cajoled into better behavior. So the U.S. pulled its diplomatic punches in a way that not only seems like appeasement in retrospect but also struck some as such at the time. If the U.S. had few tools to influence Saddam's prewar behavior, as Bush aides now acknowledge, then perhaps little would have been lost had they just written Iraq off, but Bush did not even debate the question...
...year, 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was condemned by many U.S. Senators and editorial writers, and Gone with the Wind stoked a furor with its use of the word damn. Today, other tendencies in Golden Age movies -- the stereotyping of blacks, gays and other minorities -- seem vicious in retrospect. Back then, the middle class was in charge, and they made fun of those below. Now films are a minority pleasure, so the majority is the butt of harsh humor...