Word: suburbanity
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...Brookings Institution studies have shown that the local projects congressmen and governors like to fund are much more likely to be new and expanded roads and bridges in sparsely developed areas than maintenance and repairs for dilapidated roads and bridges in urban and suburban areas. Politicians love ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and federal and state rules are often skewed to promote new sprawl roads. And it's no coincidence that these roads mean big money for home builders, oil companies, asphalt producers, engineering firms and the rest of the highway-building industry; a powerful coalition of business groups lobbied...
...send Juan and Alex to live in a Third World country they don't even know, they argued, simply because of something their parents did. With the Gomez family sitting in a South Florida detention center, the students set up a war room at a house in suburban Miami and started commandeering global networking web sites like Facebook.com...
...this fall). Rather, TV has found women leads who are strong but also weak, like Dahlia Malloy (Minnie Driver) of FX's The Riches, a drug addict and ex-con (and current con artist). Or criminal but charming, like Mary-Louise Parker's pot-dealing widow in Showtime's suburban dramedy Weeds. Or sympathetic but scary, like Courteney Cox's rapacious gossip-magazine editor in FX's Dirt. Or dedicated but damaged, like Kyra Sedgwick's detective Brenda Johnson, beset with food addictions and relationship problems, in TNT's The Closer. Or earnest but abrasive, like Chloë Sevigny's pushy...
There were exceptions, like Jane Tennison, Helen Mirren's brilliant but self-destructive, even cruel detective in the British Prime Suspect series. But the more commercial inspiration for TV's new women may be Meredith Grey. Grey's Anatomy is far removed from the suburban dysfunction of Weeds or the deadly intrigues of Damages, but it demonstrated that there was a vast audience for a show about a fleshed-out heroine who sleeps with a married man, makes bad and selfish choices and can be downright unlikable...
...Weeds (which returns in August), Parker's pot-mama Nancy Botwin runs up against the expectations of suburban moms, but the show is as much about race and family and money. Damages is first of all a damned compelling legal mystery, and Patty a magnetic presence. And Saving Grace is finally about faith (and its absence), loss (the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing) and redemption, as well as how we fight it. In an early scene, Grace's angel proves his powers by showing her a vision, and Grace --while disbelieving and resisting the miracle--is seduced...