Word: straw
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bribery and influence-peddling scandal that forced the resignation of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita last April. The L.D.P. further alienated voters, especially women, by imposing a controversial 3% consumption tax. In agreeing to liberalize agricultural imports, the party angered farmers, long the chief pillar of its support. The final straw came just weeks after Uno was named Prime Minister, when his supposedly spotless reputation was soiled by revelations of a paid affair with a geisha. "Along the way," says Katsuhiko Shirakawa, an L.D.P. legislator, "we lost sight of what the public was demanding...
...many, the last straw was the buyout clause, which forces the council to pay Healy the balance of his salary even if he is removed from his post. Such a contract, they say, deprives the city of it's most basic power--the right to fire the city manager...
...grin, the hunch of the shoulders, the sudden stare, the deliberate monotonous thud to denote anger. His performance, anything but a star turn, is intelligent, confident and touching. Hoffman brings to mind his ingratiating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or, even more strongly, his film work in Straw Dogs as a quiet man driven beyond endurance into mayhem. The show never stints on the virulent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's world, although Hall employs subtle staging and lighting cues to mollify modern spectators' disquiet at the injustice of the ending. The production is under discussion for transfer...
...quote: "The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral." Also: In 1929 the nation's economy "was revealed to be merely a paper tiger with feet of clay living in a straw house of cards that had cried 'wolf' once too often...
...release, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Professor Jones instructs his class to do exactly the opposite of what brings him success. In a way, what we've learned in the last four years poses straw figures for us to knock down. For most, knowing about deconstruction, 16th century Japanese history and "the iron triangle" have little relevance in our lives; teaching us how to learn is really just Harvard's euphemism for teaching us whatever the professors feel like sharing...