Word: shock
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Despite political dissimilarities -- Toffler says he is more liberal on some issues than the Speaker, while Gilder may be even more conservative -- the two writers have much in common. Both are former journalists who hit it big with big-think books. In Toffler's case it was Future Shock (1970), which contributed its title phrase to the language and turned its author into a much sought-after consultant-prophet; Gilder's Wealth and Poverty (1981), a ringing endorsement of capitalism and supply-side economics, became a sacred text for members of the first Reagan Administration. Both have eagerly tackled subjects...
...radio rightists offer a cloaked version of the same. But they don't care to admit it. Hot talk? Shock talk? Ban that speech! "To me," says Tradup, "shock talk is Howard Stern. Period. It's for 12-year-olds who get excited when they hear the word penis." Stern, natch, considers himself a political commentator and motivator. So does George Pataki; supported by Stern, he unseated New York Governor Mario Cuomo and saved an honored seat at his inauguration for Stern. But Howard, whose mixture of sex, politics and humongous self-pity has made him the morning star across...
...performs with the standard format of a jazz combo: piano, bass, drums, and a hornman, in this case, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. The group records several versions of tunes from the standard jazz repertoire. Hearing Taylor perform the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn composition "Johnny Come Lately" has almost the shock value that hearing Jimi Hendrix's version of "The Star Spangled Banner" must have had ten years later. The familiar jazzman's repertoire turns into a nightmare version of itself on Taylor's earliest recordings...
...driven back from the city center by greatly outnumbered and outgunned Chechen fighters. Yes, everyone knew the Russian military was no longer the tightly disciplined, overpowering army that a few years ago haunted the dreams of potential victims from Beijing to Bonn. It still came as a shock that the machine had deteriorated so badly -- and a greater shock that so much of it was riven by dissension and insubordination from teenage draftees who deserted, sometimes jumping off troop trains rather than going into battle, to senior generals who openly denounced the Kremlin's orders and local commanders who ignored...
...hands of a lesser writer, such a premise might be played simply for suspense and shock. There is plenty of both in Felicia's Journey, but Trevor grounds his effects in utterly plausible details; potential terror seems more terrible when its source is the ordinary...