Word: shrug
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...fact, Californians are no different from other Americans when it comes to risk. The national temperament seems to have a fault line all its own. On one side of that psychic divide, Americans shrug off demonstrable threats: they build houses on eroding beaches, speed without wearing seat belts, go hang gliding and expose themselves to the cancer-causing rays of the sun. On the other side, they suffer a bad case of the jitters about the smallest threat to personal well-being. They flee from apples that might bear a trace of Alar and fret about radon, nuclear power...
...such is the depth of bitterness that civil war would be hard to prevent if it did. Azerbaijani nationalists also speak seriously of carrying out their self-proclaimed secession if Moscow continues to govern Nagorno-Karabakh. "There would be a war ((with the Soviet Union))," says Huseynov with a shrug. "But we think Iran and Turkey would help us." Moscow would presumably have something of its own to say about any attempt by Baku to exercise such an option. But so far, Moscow has managed only to alienate both sides in the bitter feud. That is hardly a claim...
...what is the truth of Do the Right Thing? Whose side is Lee on? Is the movie a revolutionary scream or a fatalistic shrug? Lee leaves plenty of hints -- contradictory epigrams from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, a dedication to families of blacks slain by police, graffiti proclaiming TAWANA ((Brawley)) TOLD THE TRUTH -- but no coherent clues. Lee cagily provides a litmus test for racial attitudes in 1989, but he does so by destroying the integrity of his characters, black and white. They vault from sympathetic to venomous in the wink of a whim. One minute, Sal delivers...
What happened to the promise of Marion Barry, the fire-snorting civil rights leader? Some say the promise never existed, that all along he was an opportunist obsessed with power. Others shrug and wonder if he simply traded in his civil rights merit badges for the good life. Perhaps the passion for power simply overwhelmed his compassion for the powerless. Yet he bristles at talk of promises lost. "I reject all of that because the things I was fighting for when I came into Washington were justice, equality, fairness, for blacks to get into certain positions of responsibility, to make...
What is chilling about many of the young criminals is that they show no remorse or conscience, at least initially. Youths brag about their exploits and shrug off victims' pain. A Chicago case in which four teenagers raped and killed a medical student was solved because of good police work and what Pat O'Brien, Cook County deputy state's attorney, describes as "the defendants' inability to keep their mouths shut" about the crime. "It was a badge," he explains. "It was something they talked about as if it gave them status within that group of guys." Youngsters offhandedly refer...