Word: selfdestruct
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More important, there were unexpected Soviet failures to gloat over. An SS-N-8 missile, launched two weeks ago from a submarine in the Barents Sea and aimed at the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia, went astray and, in an obvious malfunctioning of both its guidance and selfdestruct systems, landed more than 1,500 miles off course, most probably in northeastern China. The Soviets insisted the missile had landed in their own territory...
...subcategory of journalese involves the language used to indicate a powerful or celebrated person who is about to selfdestruct or walk the plank. Anyone referred to as an "American institution," for example, is in trouble. In politics, two or more stories in the same week referring to a power person as clever or, worse, brilliant indicate that the end is near. Soon Mr. Brilliant will be labeled a "loose cannon" and transmute himself into an adviser, the Washington version of self-imposed exile. In business journalism, the phrase "one of the most respected managers in his field" informs knowing readers...
...inept security around our Beirut embassy continues to amaze me. A child would know the solution. Dig a 6-ft. trench across the roadway. Add a drawbridge and keep it open. Any terrorist vehicle without wings would bury itself in he hole and selfdestruct. A day's work should...
...revive the New Deal's old Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide longterm, low-interest federal loans so that cities, which find interest rates too high to float municipal bonds, can rebuild bridges, sewers, firehouses, schools and deteriorating mass-transit systems. Such a revolving fund, he said, should "selfdestruct in ten years" as revitalized cities repay the loans. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of Chicago's self-help Operation PUSH, charged that before Reagan, federal programs for the cities were "humane, sensible, broadly based," while under Reagan they are "anti-poor, anti-worker, antiblack, part of a meanness mania...
Just how pragmatic Reagan and the Republican conservatives could be was of course the big suspenseful question at Detroit. The answer seems to be that the party is no longer on selfdestruct. A few hurried journalistic reassessments of Reagan came out of Detroit. Typical was a column from Meg Greenfield, the Washington Post's editorial-page editor. Having finally seen Reagan up close, Greenfield had some advice for Carter: forget trying to paint Reagan as a nuke-waving, overaged, stupid and dangerous man to an American public that had seen him aw-shucksing his way coolly out of difficult...