Word: tact
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...corner them, someone carps along this line: "Dammit, on subjects I'm personally involved in, you guys often get it wrong." The critic usually adds that if he had been consulted, all would have been right. How a journalist responds to this generic complaint depends partly on his tact and hubris quotients. Insiders with their own strong views, after all, tend to cavil about competing ideas and stories they consider less than comprehensive. But when I run into the I.L. these days, I find myself saying, "I know what you mean...
...when a dance, organized to honor the local Viet vets, works out awkwardly. And when -- at Samantha's insistence -- Emmett and Mamaw join her on a pilgrimage to the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the movie achieves real power. Director Norman Jewison understates his final sequence with admirable tact. No melodramatic shocks of recognition, no epiphanies -- merely simple people silently touching the names of loved ones inscribed on the memorial, tentatively, thoughtfully restoring connections. It is just fine, just right, just enough for now. In Country is, finally, a lovely, necessary little stitch in our torn time...
...Tact and tenderness may be a lot to expect from someone who must spend roughly twelve years learning the trade, work impossible hours, be available to patients day and night, keep abreast of changing technology and live a peaceable life while constantly dealing with death. "The patient wants the best of both worlds," charges Lester King, a Chicago physician and medical historian. "He wants the knowledge and precision of the most advanced science, and the care and concern of the old-fashioned practitioner...
Politics is, and must be, deceptive. Even though George Bush may think of his grandchildren as "the little brown ones," it's not necessary to proclaim that loudly to the President and the rest of the American public. Tact, which is merely a milder form of lying, is essential in politics, and it's time Bush learned that lesson...
...child's-eye view of the struggle for survival and identity. Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! traces the odyssey of a ten-year-old boy abandoned in India's fetid slums. This artful heartbreaker (which won the Camera d'Or for best first feature) is made with passion and tact -- an expose that also, eloquently, reveals...