Word: solemn
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...Bush's fractured syntax, pronouns mysteriously vanished, words were slurred together and odd idioms like "Don't cry for me Argentina" inserted themselves awkwardly into attempts at solemn oratory. Bush never seemed in total control of his language; he was like a somewhat inexpert horseman on a bucking bronco, jerking around abruptly from clause to clause and sometimes falling off altogether mid-sentence...
...austerity of that approach gives the books something of the quality of redwoods -- lofty, solid monuments invested with an almost classical presence. They can also seem unbendingly solemn. "I like to think I have a merry side," he says, almost wistfully, and in conversation he certainly talks often of "fun," his sonorous voice rolling up and down with command and theatricality, now mimicking a genteel old lady, now a Taoist sage. "I've never in my life -- or hardly ever -- laughed so loud as during the creation of my fiction," he says, while acknowledging that his humor...
Only in America has power been passed to a new generation that defines the world in terms of post-cold-war economic realities. The John Kennedy parallel is inescapable -- how vividly his sporting vitality contrasted with the solemn visages of Harold Macmillan, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. Once again it seems apt to recall William Wordsworth's lines in thrall of the French Revolution: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven...
...Familiarity" is not the name Bill Clinton attaches to the guiding spirit of his presidency. When he is feeling rhetorical, he speaks instead of the New Covenant, which he defines as "a solemn agreement between the people and their government, based not simply on what each of us can take, but on what all of us must give." Clinton's New Covenant offers opportunity even as it demands responsibility. Ask what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country...
...imitator of Oliver Stone is waiting in the wings to do just that: there are truckloads of Basquiat works in Beverly Hills. The plain truth -- that Basquiat killed Basquiat, that nobody but he was sticking the needles in his arm -- is not going to get much airing at this solemn farce of heroic victimology...