Word: toning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad. Hi. I'm not home right now, but if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone...
...movie Superman is a different matter. He has to contend with Margot Kidder as a liberated Lois Lane who can look on him with an earthy yen ("How big are you?" she asks in a tone that even Superman can almost understand). In Superman II she throws herself into the Niagara River just above the falls to tempt Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent into revealing his identity by rescuing her. Kent avoids the trap by helping her out with a tree branch. Only when they are drying off in front of a fireplace does his failure to be scorched...
...strengths and weaknesses. If he can't shake your hand, he'll give you a call. Strauss spends hours a day on the phone, staying in touch with his network of friends, his cello-like Texas drawl coming through as either a low, world- weary growl or a tone much higher on the scale when he's angry or excited. His conversations are laced with humor or biting sarcasm. "Listen, you sumbitch," he barks to a friend, "you've got a problem, and I'm going to tell you how to solve...
Although he may imitate the technique of better writers by using such allusions, here they seem out of place and forced. And his claim that the book is harmless and silly hardly conforms to the highbrow tone of the work, leaving his attempt at juggling knowledge of the literary with techniques of mass culture unsuccessful...
...brought up "the Ronald Reagan cupped-ear gambit. The press is deliberately and systematically kept away from him. All you hear is a bunch of monkeys screaming at him when they could easily have been brought right up, and the President could have stood and talked in a conversational tone. That is killing us, and it's not hurting Ronald Reagan one bit, and they know...