Word: scooped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cameo, a gem of political theatrics last week in the Rose Garden burnished by sunshine and the lovely memory of every American's uncle, the late Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson. It was too tiny a melody for the tin ears of the networks. And yet, those few moments foreshadowed the very bugle call of Ronald Reagan's campaign to reclaim the Oval Office...
...Reagan has genius it was displayed in this posthumous presentation of the Medal of Freedom to Scoop. If Reagan does glide through to victory, it will be because of his singular instincts about how to play President. He melds great national principles with private ambitions; he blends what is real with what is ephemeral. Emotion becomes meaning. Politics becomes sacred policy. Adversaries become allies...
Reagan unabashedly used Scoop, but did so in a way that honored his memory, his family and his country. The President threw out his big arms and gathered everybody in-Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, Jew, Baptist, old, young, hawk, dove, hardhat, tycoon. And none of them could argue, only lean back and enjoy the political theater that Reagan had adroitly and effortlessly stage-managed...
Reagan stood the memory of Scoop beside him on the world's stage ("one of the great Senators in our history"), and the two of them ("Let others push each chic new belief ...") marched as defenders of "the permanent against the merely prevalent...
Finally, journalism often misses the truth by unconsciously eroding one's sympathy with life. A seasoned correspondent in Evelyn Waugh's maliciously funny novel Scoop lectures a green reporter. "You know," he says, "you've got a lot to learn about journalism. Look at it this way. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read." The matter is not a laughing one. A superabundance of news has the benumbing effect of mob rule on the senses. Every problem in the world begins to look unreachable, unimprovable. What could...