Word: smarted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Many Chinese became fans of President Carter after he formally recognized the PRC last year. "We think he's a very smart guy, but we're just judging him on what he did for Sino-American relations, Bing says. But, he adds, Ronald Reagan--who drew headlines this summer for his alleged "two-China" policy "seems a bit muddleheaded in facing the choice between Taiwan, as a small trade partner, and China, as the great counterbalance of the Russian threat." Lynn doubts Reagan would be able to change the U.S.'s warm-attitude towards China. "It's become such...
...patina, however, has neither obscured nor answered the most troubling question about Reagan. Put starkly, that question is whether he is smart enough to be President. The U.S. has seldom demanded that its chief executive officers be intellectuals, of course. But clear-eyed realism, sensitive and discriminating judgment, a feel for power relationships, instinct born of at least a general knowledge of how the System works are all demanded in a President...
Reagan is well aware of the doubts about his brainpower, and occasionally jokes about the subject. He told one audience, "I'm not smart enough to lie," and quipped to construction workers in New York City the other day that a proffered hard hat would not fit because "I have a pinhead." But the humor is forced; cracks about his intelligence obviously hurt...
This is indeed the Army of the eighties, though, with the stereotypical personalities of all the old service comedies transplanted into new bodies. The ferocious drill sergeant is Black; the macho commanding officer and the hard-bitten, street-smart ex-con are female. And as well as turning boys into men, the New Army turns girls into women. We know Private Benjamin has become a real woman because she has her first orgasm ("Now I know what it is I've been faking all these years!") with a French gynecologist she picks up while on leave...
Kingsley Amis, the author of Lucky Jim, The Anti-Death League, and a host of other smart, stylish and occasionally quite silly novels, writes wise and vaguely stodgy poetry, full of long gentlemanly metaphors but without much crispness of language. His Collected Poems 1944-1979 is, as any bag of 35 years' worth of anything has every right to be, a bit of a hodge podge. There are some prematurely-greying early works of some elegance, rather reminiscent of early Philip Larkin or John Wain ("Belgian Winter," "Retrospect"); there is some doggerel ("Fair Shares for All"); there is some sophomoric...