Word: self
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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During late-night negotiations at Karmazin's $11.4 million Trump Tower condo, the two men found common ground. Both were self-made entrepreneurs who prided themselves on rising from modest means to head powerful companies. "Sumner and I have parallel interests," says Karmazin. Says Redstone: "I insisted that Mel come along...
...done his last big deal. Probably. This year anyway. Oh, heck, at least before our next issue hits the stands. That seems safe. He keeps saying he's done, hedging ever so slightly, and then proving himself wrong. It's either a rare lapse of vision for this self-made billionaire or the grandest ongoing head fake in the entertainment industry...
Every event in the Potter books follows seamlessly from his initial self-discovery. Harry may be a skinny kid with glasses, green eyes and an unruly shock of black hair, but he also harbors uncertain potentialities. Did he thwart Voldemort's assault because of innate goodness or because he carries, even as an infant, a strain of evil more powerful than that of the Dark Wizard's? This question will remind some of the Star Wars films and the tangled destinies of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. But once such comparisons begin, they can lead in many directions...
...Purdy's book is a precocious diatribe against the sort of media-savvy detachment that passes for intelligence and maturity in the age of Letter- man. "The ironic individual," he writes, "is a bit like Seinfeld without a script; at ease in banter, versed in allusion, and almost debilitatingly self-aware." In Purdy's opinion, the price of such crippling cleverness is social stagnation and private emptiness. Ironists waste time smirking rather than working--working to build a better world, that is. And Purdy, an unapologetic progressive, believes in a better world. Sincerely. Earnestly. Some might even say annoyingly...
...very suave but very ignorant self-satisfaction," Purdy says of the Exeter atmosphere. "There was this sense of casual entitlement." Later he was admitted to Harvard, where he became, in his own dramatic phrase, "obsessed with ethics." Listening to Purdy describe his zeal for Kant and Hegel, it's easy to see why certain critics can't help poking fun at him. Why so serious? And considering the status of Purdy's heroes--from the great French essayist Montaigne to the brave Polish dissident Adam Michnik--the objects of his derision seem like straw men. Purdy singles out for special...