Word: sideshows
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Self-awareness is television's big-time plague. Name the social issue, front-page crime or family trauma, and somebody is thrashing it out on a TV talk show. A listing of typical topics is a surrealistic blur of human misery, sideshow voyeurism and sheer lunacy: illegitimate kids who found their natural parents but wish they hadn't; transplant recipients who claim to have adopted the personalities of their donors; women who have been raped by the same man more than once; guys who like overweight gals; mothers-in-law from hell; doctors with AIDS; crack addicts with babies; celebrities...
Rush gives great spiel. His radio persona, which is nearly identical to his genially blustering off-mike personality, mixes country lawyer with sideshow barker, tent evangelist with Spike Jones rhythm section. In the space of a single sentence, he will rattle newspapers into the microphone, impersonate Benjamin Hooks (Does the N.A.A.C.P. director really sound like Amos 'n' Andy's Kingfish?) and break into an impromptu chorus of Blue Moon. When Limbaugh gets revved up, he comes on like John Madden with a grudge...
Arms control was always something between a sham and a sideshow. The end of the cold war has proved it. The U.S.S.R. today has thousands more nuclear warheads than it did 10 years ago. Yet we feel far more secure today. Why? Because security never depended on numbers. It depended on intentions. Soviet intentions have changed, and the change had nothing at all to do with arms control...
...industry has a considerable stake in this sideshow. OS/2 was supposed to be a new standard, but its weak showing so far has left the field open. AT&T, for instance, is pushing its Unix operating system, and Apple Computer is promoting a program of its own. This week Apple will introduce an advanced version of the Macintosh operating system...
...that created the industry's hottest product of the 1980s is parting ways. IBM is developing its upgrade of OS/2, while Microsoft is making a separate version, setting up a competition for dominance in desktop computers, the most important segment of an important industry. "It's an interesting sideshow," says Gates. "But it will be the marketplace that decides the winner...