Word: symbolic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...right, you folks, I want those two seats," the facsimile driver will say. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those two seats." In the middle of the bus, a plaster of Paris simulacrum of Rosa Parks will just sit there, a mute symbol of the incident that sparked the epic Montgomery bus boycott. "Look, woman, I told you I wanted the seat!" the mock voice of the bus driver will continue. "Are you going to stand up?" The plaster statue of Parks will remain motionless...
...Woodstock, N.Y., became the symbol of the Age of Aquarius when it lent its name to a three-day love-in and rock concert featuring, among others, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Arlo Guthrie. Though the festival was ultimately held 50 miles away, Flower Power devotees and New York City weekenders have since flocked to the once quiet community. But as Woodstock (pop. 6,800) has grown, it has run into some of the fiscal problems facing other towns and cities. Among them: paying off an $8.5 million debt to the local sewer district...
They were a welcome sight around health clubs, malls and nursing homes throughout Southern California. The mobile medical labs offered that great American come-on, something for nothing -- in this case, free medical exams. But last week the ubiquitous vans became a symbol of a disease contributing to the exploding cost of U.S. health care: insurance fraud. A Los Angeles grand jury returned a 175-count indictment against brothers Michael and David Smushkevich, along with 10 others, charging that they used the freebie checkups to submit $1 billion in fake claims. All told, they allegedly collected more than $50 million...
...wrongs seem obvious. The highly visible act of excluding people from prominent community institutions based on skin color serves as a powerful and disturbing symbol that racism is considered tolerable in the nation's top social echelons -- just as excluding women and Jews sends a message that sexism and anti-Semitism should still be considered permissible. In addition, in almost all cases, the private clubs bring together a community's business, professional and political elites and thus perpetuate patterns of unequal opportunity...
...least as outsiders exaggerate it: the boastful, cocksure Gascon whose fellow provincials are defined in Rostand's play as "free fighters, free lovers, free spenders, defenders of old homes, old names and old splendors . . . bragging of crests , and pedigrees." Yet now it seems that the rooster, the national symbol, is crestfallen...