Word: sham
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...diffuse movement has been dismissed with the name given it by Jean Cocteau: le rappel a l'ordre, the call to order. The custom has been to see it as a hiatus in the forward drive of modernism -- at best a faltering of energy, and at worst an Arcadian sham, a rehearsal for the coarse, repressive state art of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. This show is the first to take an inquisitive and fair-minded look at it. The curators, Elizabeth Cowling of Edinburgh University and Jennifer Mundy of the Tate, have done an admirably lucid job of presenting...
More than most other naturalists, Fossey bonded with the subjects of her inquiry. When poachers killed the animals she had named Digit, Uncle Bert and Macho, she turned into a Rambo of animal rights. She beat captured poachers and terrified others with sham witchcraft. She shot at cattle that got too close to her "family's" territory...
Whatever the political costs, activists on each side of the abortion debate have vowed to battle it out, somehow assured they can win over the middle. NARAL's Michelman is determined to convince the public that parental-consent laws are a sham. Pro-life and pro-choice forces in Congress pledge to wage the fight over funds for rape and incest victims again and again, every time Boxer or her allies attach a rider to a bill. "We'll debate this till we're blue in the face, and there will be blood all over the chamber," says Hyde...
...controversy offers the U.S. an opportunity to reassess the cost of past profligacy and salvage what remains of a treasured legacy of wildlife and ancient forest. Neither the owl nor the timbermen are served by further governmental inaction or sham solutions. What is gained by waiting until the last fir topples, the owl slips closer to extinction, or the mills finally retool or shut down because there are no more old-growth trees available? The lesson of the owl is not that environmental and economic concerns are incompatible, but that the longer society lacks the political courage...
...prejudiced director confronted by these three well-drawn Black characters is the suave Al Manners, played by Jed Sexton. Manners believes he is racially enlightened because he has agreed to direct a performance with Black actors. But his impatience and condescension toward the actors betray his sham egalitariansism. In one scene, Manners asks Wiletta to "do him a favor and don't think," implying that her ideas are not worthy of his consideration...