Word: sober
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges, in the performance of his life) knows better. He just nods sober agreement with Hughes. He is in the process of creating a utopian automobile that will get no further off the ground, commercially speaking, than the Goose did. But who cares? He is not in the business of building empires; he is in the business of building dreams. And for him, as for Hughes, it is necessary to reproduce his fancy only once in reality to achieve fulfillment. Indeed, after seeing Francis Coppola's marvelous Tucker, one believes that if the inventor had been forced...
Despite the large number of contenders, the Governor is intent on keeping the process sober and thorough. There will be no Mondale-like press conferences at the end of the driveway; no skeletons left in the closet, as with McGovern's selection of Senator Thomas Eagleton; and no leaks. Aspirants have been asked to turn over everything but dental records to a claque of half a dozen aides who pore over the documents in isolation two floors above campaign headquarters in a red brick building on the fringe of Boston's Combat Zone. They are called the Manhattan Project...
Never mind that many versions of this saga contradicted one another and the facts of the matter; they were invariably pithy and memorable. Donaldson's determination to set the record straight leads him to a repudiation of Cheever's freewheeling manner. Cliches seem to certify sober, scholarly research: "Life was not all fun and games, however" . . . "The New Yorker's taste was genteel, and as time wore on Cheever wrote about everything under the sun" . . . "Fred was the apple of his father...
These veterans of radical politics compare the current surge in interest to that of the early 1960s, but they say students are now more sober and pessimistic than their predecessors. They want to change their campuses, not the world; they try to change specific attitudes, not human nature itself...
...issues of arms control and superpower relations. In the last few years, Reagan has changed his tone, from bellicose hostility to pragmatic moderation. The mutual suspicion and lack of dialogue that characterized U.S.-Soviet relations during the early years of this administration have been replaced by a sober, though still wary, relationship...