Word: sternly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kurdish faction penned a "Your Excellency" plea to Saddam Hussein, the man who gassed 5,000 Kurds to death eight years ago, inviting the Iraqi dictator's army to enter the Kurds' safe haven to knock out another Kurdish faction. On Aug. 28 Bill Clinton dispatched a stern diplomatic demarche to Baghdad warning Saddam not to try any such thing. Three days later he fired off another "don't go" advisory, and White House advisers faxed a four-page decision memo recommending military retaliation to the presidential campaign bus in Dyersburg, Tennessee. And last Wednesday, after setting off a sizable...
...Thursday night he looked the American people in the eye and in a stern, commanding speech told them that unless they shaped up and stopped failing key moral "tests," unless they substituted what is hard and right for what is easy and fun, the nation's best days were past. The mere act of voting for him, suggested Dole, would be morally renewing because he was asking them to make hard choices: courage over comfort, honor over wealth. Whether or not the polls bounce and the mood changes, Dole tried to frame the election as a choice: I am older...
...Dole's acceptance speech was big--stern, daring, even at moments Churchillian--but it was marked most by a kind of interrupted eloquence. The speech betrayed the weight of a few too many hands. Even in its strongest, most poetic passages there seemed to be something missing. When Dole stirringly pointed to the exits in the convention hall and declared the Republicans the party of Lincoln, he invited any bigoted delegates to leave, "as I stand here and hold this ground." But the way the section was constructed, it seemed as if he were telling the party it was bigoted...
...news to come out of this convention, it was that the often-reviled Huffington is an affable wit indeed. Asking absurd questions of her compatriots (to Missouri Senator John Ashcroft: "Have you ever paid for a meal at this convention?") she metamorphosed into a finishing-school version of Howard Stern...
Chan plays all this with an easy-going manner; as the plucky hero, he effectively gives the impression that he really is enjoying the fighting frenzy. Khan's police chief tries to be stern and businesslike, but even she lets the movie's infectious hyperactivity make her character giddy, as when, loaded with dynamite, she squirms and hops to use Chan as a human shield...