Word: taunt
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...help prepare a man to be President of the U.S.? This question of heroics was raised for Senator John Glenn the other night in New York City when all the candidates were strutting their stuff at a Democratic forum. Glenn got sore, correctly reading in the question the faint taunt that military men may not be quite deep enough for the Oval Office. The Senator won the night by reminding his audience that he had been "representing the future of this country" in those years. He also took a swipe at New York's Governor Mario Cuomo...
...need a war to touch their heart of darkness, Rabe seems to suggest; the threat of human intimacy is provocation enough. Are they men like Billy (Matthew Modine), a fresh-faced lad with a college education? Or Richie (Mitchell Lichtenstein), an upper-class homosexual with a taste for taunt? Or Roger (David Alan Grier), a sweet-natured black who deflects each insult with a shrug? Or Carlyle (Michael Wright), the slum-bred black spoiling for a quick apocalypse? Doesn't matter. When the crisis comes, they will be as surprised as the paratrooper whose chute just wouldn...
...Japanese. They are a remarkably law-abiding people. Yet at graduation time this spring, more than 10% of the nation's junior high schools were guarded by the police. A group of teenagers in Yokohama not long ago beat several street bums to death. Gangs of motorcycle riders taunt the police on Saturday nights; they blast past the stations and dare police to chase them through the maze of traffic. Juvenile delinquency, historically always low, has increased 80% since 1972. A White Paper issued by the Prime Minister's office concluded of today's youth: "They are devoid of perseverance...
...between, we meet the villagers: cantankerous, narrowly provincial, soaked in religious zeal and, occasionally, intoxicated with a bizarre humor. The desire to escape a barren, futile existence is grimly repressed. It translates into a lurking violence. Three children taunt a woman said to be a hermaphrodite (Cecily Hobbs) and try to impale her on a hoe as if it were a pitchfork. A sadistic stepmother (Amelda Brown) torments her placidly submissive stepdaughter (Tricia Kelly) in order to "feel something." At one point, Val asks Frank: "What are you frightened of?" Frank replies: "Going mad. Heights. Beauty." Says Val: "Lucky...
...rival groups taunt and threaten each other; once in a while they rumble; sometimes a flare of gang anger can lead to sudden death. One such incident sends two greasers, Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) and Johnny (Ralph Macchio), on a trek away from Tulsa to live on the lam and find new ways of being brave and getting hurt. Another greaser, Dallas (Matt Dillon), provides a role model for sexy self-destruction. The bleak moral of Francis Coppola's movie, based on an S.E. Hinton novel that has sold 4 million copies in the U.S., is that...