Word: straitjacket
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years Moscow's stringent ideological standards have kept Soviet artists and writers in a creative straitjacket. To some, however, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's recent calls for more "openness" and "grass-roots creativity" signaled that a new age was about to dawn. Apparently intent on extending that proposition to literature, Soviet Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, 52, delivered a rousing speech before a congress of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation objecting to the limitations placed on writers by the state. Judging by the official caution with which the Soviet press last week reported his address, he may have spoken...
After years of paying lip service to balanced budgets while racking up annual deficits approaching $200 billion, Congress and the White House have finally decided to fit themselves with a fiscal straitjacket. The bill, sponsored by Senate Republicans Phil Gramm of Texas and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and by Democrat Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, compels Congress to vote to balance the budget within five years or face automatic cuts. "What % this bill does is put the fat in the fire," declared Gramm. "It forces decisions." Senator J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, however, likened Congressmen voting for the bill...
...have seldom been higher than last September, when the networks prepared to unveil four new weekly anthology series. The shows boasted big-name directors and writers (headed by Hollywood's ubiquitous mogul Steven Spielberg), harked back to fondly remembered series from TV's past, and promised liberation from the straitjacket of recurring characters and continuing story lines. If the anthology shows worked, it seemed, a programming revolution might be in the offing...
...counterpart, lesbian author Kate Millet, would have agreed wholeheartedly; Millet's talk on "Sex and Censorship" frequently played to the crowd with lines such as "the gay shall lead the way...out of the hetero-straitjacket," which provided welcome relief from tense differences...
...reformers have loosened the Maoist straitjacket on the economy, they have also permitted greater, though still limited, social, cultural and even political freedom. Their far-reaching education program, for example, is founded on Deng's observation that "if a huge nation with 1 billion people could boost its education, its tremendous superiority in human resources would never be matched by any other country." The government plans to introduce gradually nine years of compulsory education throughout all of China. Until now, such basic education has not been mandatory, and was available only in the cities. Under the new plan, primary...