Word: rostrum
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...world's a ship on its passage out," Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, "and the pulpit is its prow." That may have been true at one time--but times have changed, moral authority has dispersed, the 1960s and '70s toppled many a preacher from his rostrum, along with other symbols of authority. "That created a trauma in the churches," argues William Schweiker, professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago. "The first reaction was to encourage a therapeutic emphasis on pastoral care." When it came to preaching, as opposed to social activism and counseling, the mainline churches lost their...
...stood before the nation for the live television broadcast of a "mass cultural gathering" that featured pirouetting schoolchildren singing ditties like New Beijing Love, New Olympic Dreams. Then President Jiang Zemin hitched a ride to Tiananmen Square for the most populist performance of his career. He appeared on the rostrum overlooking the crowd?near the same place Chairman Mao Zedong had reviewed a million Red Guards, the shock troops of the Cultural Revolution?and waved his arms like a conductor as the masses sang along with a revolutionary hymn that boomed from loudspeakers. The roar of support was deafening. "Seeing...
...More ? So the party runs a risk. When Jiang climbed the rostrum over Tiananmen Square for his maestro performance, he forever linked his party with the Olympics. The flip side of that joyous celebration in the capital last week is that Chinese could blame their leaders if they blow the Games. That has raised expectations that the government may modify its behavior to ensure success?and its own survival...
...anti-abortion rights position and his wanting to drill for oil in Alaska's protected wilderness. He flicked at what he calls the "death tax," but Democrats will remind voters that the move would funnel billions to the superrich. Bush's education plans sounded good from the rostrum, but it'll be all but impossible to sell Congress on vouchers for religious schools. Missile defense? It might be an easier sell if the Pentagon could get the thing to work...
...simple double desks of the twins, and the pantomime rostrum of C.B. draw attention to how stark the set is--a draped dais surrounded by twenty telephones, with other furniture passim. Such an arrangement is hard to dislike and equally hard to fathom. Is it the device-crazed silliness of modern life that leads it on? Or a nihilistic take on that culture? Or a big sardonic joke free of philosophical posture...