Word: show
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Krenz, almost pleading for credibility, faced an uphill struggle as popular demands for a reckoning grew. In East Berlin a government television team entered the so-called "forbidden city" of Wandlitz, situated on a lake outside Berlin, to show the public how the elite, including Krenz, had lived in luxury, enjoying servants, limousines and imported Western delicacies -- a life-style totally removed from the generally spartan existence of most East Germans. The compound is surrounded by a wall; no photographs of it have been published until now. Krenz moved from Wandlitz to a small apartment in East Berlin...
Rifkin's performance, which he delivers on average 90 times a year, is a mixture of Jimmy Swaggart, Phil Donahue and Werner Erhard. Twenty years of teaching, preaching and raising consciences -- some would call it rabble- rousing -- have refined this show to the point that it has a slick, thoroughly professional sheen. Rifkin moves through an audience as if it were his private party, talking, interviewing, questioning and, occasionally but ever so kindly, embarrassing. He will perform for 30 minutes or eight hours, depending on the contract. His basic sermon is an attack on "the Boys," as he calls Francis...
...Rifkin, such criticism is merely evidence that he is on the right track. "My job," he says, "is to point out some of the problems that might arise with new technologies. Scientists should show us how these new technologies work. Then society, not scientists, should decide if it wants to use them. Scientists are not gods; they're just technicians. They're just human beings, with all the good and bad intentions of everyone else. If you criticize them at all, you're stopping the drive toward utopia. But there has to be both sides...
Maybe longer. Rifkin, 44, enjoys most the college lectures that often have him flying two to four times a week. One recent swing took the Rifkin show to Alfred University in upstate New York. As usual, he charmed and joked, provoked and pleased. He lectured the freshman class about the need for activism at a time of environmental crisis brought about by misguided values. Afterward, dozens of students remained in the gymnasium to form an environmental action group. Leaving the hall, Rifkin looked back over his shoulder and said to a companion that these were the children of the antiwar...
Gorbachev's time may be running out. Western economists believe, contrary to official Soviet statistics purporting to show growth, that the economy is actually shrinking. What can the West do to help? Industrial nations can offer advice and much needed economic expertise, but massive financial aid would be ill advised and probably not what the Soviets want in any case. Abalkin has already mentioned that the Soviets would like to be given the trading status of most favored nation, along with more freedom to import high-technology goods. But by and large, Soviet economists understand that they have to solve...