Word: shrifted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before Congressman Gus Savage embarked on an official trip to China in 1986, a House staffer asked his top aide what the Illinois Democrat wanted to explore during the ten-day stay. "Tailored clothing," she replied. What she meant was custom-made suits. Savage not only gave short shrift to the official meetings that were the ostensible purpose of his tour, but also cut short his visit so he could devote three days to sightseeing and fittings in Hong Kong and Seoul. Total cost of the 16-day junket, which also included Japan: $6,731, presumably not including his haberdashery...
...vision to the key players and the larger issues. "The campaign may have seemed sour and petty," Isaacson says, "but we tried to find interesting ways to cover it." He points with special pride to a series of essays in which the magazine explored the issues that received short shrift from the candidates: health care, the underclass, homelessness, relations with the Soviets. The Grapevine section took readers behind the scenes for exclusive candid snapshots of the campaign. TIME also kept a close watch on the coterie of aides managing the candidates. "It was the year of the handlers," says Isaacson...
Foreign affairs got relatively short shrift, and neither debater broke new ground. Dukakis, as expected, assailed Bush sharply for the Administration's dealings with Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and for its "tragic" sales of arms to Iran. Bush, he said, had not been "out of the loop," as the Vice President had contended, but had attended "meeting after meeting after meeting" at which the arms sales were discussed and approved. His own position, said Dukakis, was that "there can be no concessions under any circumstances" to terrorists, however "agonizing" it might be to let American citizens remain in captivity...
...blacks got a brief ride on the B-movie circuit in the '70s (Shaft, Superfly), and Hispanics got short shrift, even as Mexicans were streaming into California to tend moguls' gardens and kitchens. When Latin actors did seize center screen, it was in art-house fodder like Alambrista!, Zoot Suit, El Norte and Crossover Dreams. These films meant well, but they rarely did well. They staggered under the weight of their liberal messages like a postman with the A.C.L.U. on his route. So many good intentions were riding on these films that they became morality plays, long on the uplift...
Television gets high marks for inclusiveness, with few notable omissions (cable gets short shrift, and commercials are mentioned only in passing). Organization, however, is a problem; too often it seems arbitrary or wrongheaded. An episode about TV drama contains no mention of Roots, the highest-rated mini-series in history; it shows up later in a section on TV and race. ABC's decision to pair Howard Cosell with Don Meredith on Monday Night Football is examined for several minutes in the opening program, yet Sesame Street, possibly TV's single most important contribution to American society, is tucked into...