Word: toning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...from Indiana as his running mate. The news, which stunned even Bush's top aides, had hardly sunk in when a hyperexcited Quayle threw an arm around Bush's shoulders during a riverboat rally later that day and shouted, "Go get 'em!" The inelegance of the moment set the tone for things to come...
...publisher has readied an extraordinary 350,000 copies, yet Standing Firm does not appear to contain many fresh disclosures. Only the uncharitable tone is striking. Quayle is hardly the first to notice that Brent Scowcroft, not Baker, was the real architect of most of Bush's foreign policy successes. Nor is it news that Kemp can be an aimless talkaholic or that Baker looks out for No. 1. Even Quayle's closest advisers lament that the book lacks anything approaching a Quayle vision of the future. "It's a funny book," said one of them. "It's less...
...film noir, evil is endemic in our history and our society, inescapably embracing both sexes and every social type. Putting it mildly, the genre is -- or was -- cynical and subversive. But given the power of humanistic piety in contemporary movies -- it is virtually the only acceptable tone for American films seeking an adult audience -- film noir, if it's done at all, is usually accompanied by nostalgic winks and genial, reassuring cues of self- consciousness. Just kidding, folks, say the filmmakers. Red Rock West, in contrast, is all furious conviction. Its humor is sardonic; its ironies are conveyed by violence...
Bellow recalls the good old days with the pugnacious pride of a self-made man. The tone can get overbearing, and there are blind spots, but one would have to be afflicted with multiple sensory deficits to miss his point. Urban America is in physical decline. Cities as seats of education and social stability have decayed. Relations among ethnic and racial groups may have been raw in the poor immigrant neighborhoods of Bellow's youth, but fractious communities still shared a common identity as Americans. No longer. "The slums, as a friend of mine once observed, were ruined," he writes...
...stage and in the recording studio. Throughout his search for technical perfection, he hummed along audibly and slightly off-key. In many ways the odd combination of musical precision with his discordant vocal impromptus characterized much of Gould's personality: his music reflected a purist's sensitivity to rhythm, tone and order, while his words and actions remained erratic and undecipherable. A recluse who eventually gave up live performances, he soon found other means of communication through his writing, recordings, and radio shows. Director Francois Girard transposes Gould's contradictions into another medium in his film, "Thirty Two short Films...