Word: ripleyisms
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...Reading the Signs Amanda Ripley was correct that constant exaggerations concerning terrorist threats will make us less safe [June 18]. She points out the dangers of using terrorism for political gain. The color-coded terrorism warnings during the 2004 presidential campaign were a cynical example of that bombast. The drumbeat from pro-Iraq-war elements aims to reassure us that we're fighting terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them within our borders. The episode at Fort Dix in New Jersey, no matter how dumb the plotters were, is proof positive that terrorism can occur...
...Amanda Ripley suggested that the John F. Kennedy Airport terrorists were amateurs and therefore not a major problem. But most terrorists are amateurs. It doesn't take much training to be a suicide bomber. A car bomb is clearly the work of an amateur. A couple of amateurs in a small boat blew a hole in the U.S.S. Cole. The discovery of the J.F.K. plot is a good thing. Nobody knows the extent of the disaster that could have happened if the plot had been allowed to develop. Americans want to thwart all attacks, whether the terrorists are amateurs...
...Unfortunate Events each wound up slowly dragging in more than $100 million domestically), Carrey fired Nick Stevens of United Talent Agency, the agent who had guided him through his entire career. Then two movies - Used Guys with Ben Stiller and a comedy with Cameron Diaz - fell apart. And Ripley's Believe It or Not was also delayed. "I just can't put software out. I can't. I'll have a physical reaction," says Carrey. "I'll be three weeks away from a project, and the universe will take it away from me. That's what happened with Used Guys...
...Damon has said he's pleased to be playing a bad guy, but of course he's playing a bad guy playing a good guy. (He had a similar role, of the charming swine, in The Talented Mr. Ripley.) What's true about Colin's nature is that he's the man on the rise and on the make, with a practiced smile that can impress the cops and please the ladies. When he meets Madolyn, the shrink, he suavely spouts this apercu: "Freud said the Irish were the only people who were impervious to psychoanalysis." (The "impervious...
...look forward, not back. Photographer Anthony Suau visited southeastern Louisiana five times over the past year to document the tribulations and occasional triumphs of a region struggling to rebuild. Meanwhile, new threats are always gathering off our shores, along our fault lines and across our plains. As Amanda Ripley writes in her investigation of America's curious and dangerous reluctance to prepare for the next disaster (see page 54), the question a year after Katrina is not who will save us the next time but how will we save ourselves...