Word: unction
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...century America called for considerably more formality and pretension. The prose of acknowledged masters of that kind of writing--such as Lincoln's fellow orator at Gettysburg, Edward Everett, or Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner--generally featured elevated diction, self-consciously artful expression and a certain moral unction. Lincoln's insistence on direct and forthright language, by contrast, seemed "odd" or "peculiar," as in this passage from a public letter he sent to Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, an antislavery paper: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either...
...Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Catholic side boasts three mosaics. In the center is Mary Magdalene; to the left is Christ, removed from the Cross; and to the right is none other than ... Abraham, about to slay Isaac. Notes Feiler: "The image of Jesus sprawled on the unction stone is nearly identical to the image of Isaac on the altar." The New Testament book Romans proposes Isaac's binding and release as a prophetic foreshadowing of the Resurrection...
...Cheney is not vice-presidential standby equipment but rather a vital part of the Bush Administration, his medical fragility (if that's what it is) raises semiurgent questions about illness and power. When young John Kennedy was elected in 1960, he had already been given the sacrament of Extreme Unction several times. He had suffered for years from life-threatening Addison's disease. Kennedy succeeded Dwight Eisenhower, whose presidency was much afflicted by heart trouble and ileitis. Lyndon Johnson, following J.F.K., had a history of heart attacks and a Rabelaisian appetite for all sorts of things that were not good...
...routine sounded like this: "Why, that dumb n-----....." Then the speaker would realize he was talking to someone (probably a Yankee), who might not be in harmony with going around saying "n-----." So the speaker might backpedal, with an unction of benevolence: "Uh, 'cose, you know, I don't mean nuthin' by that. (Squinting now into the middle distance, with a philosophical air; if outdoors, he might even spit speculatively.) "The way I figure, they'se white n------ as well as black...
...piece has some eerily effective moments. The sponging of a condemned man's head makes electrocution seem a sacrament: baptism and extreme unction in a single dab. The healing scenes will evoke tears, some of them earned. And there's a lot of sharp acting, led by Hanks' pained restraint. The two villains are vigorously portrayed: a sadistic, craven guard (Doug Hutchison) and a strutting, rabid inmate (played with a daringly lunatic, dark-star quality by Sam Rockwell), whose crimes are even worse than we feared. At the core, though, one finds a slacky, sappy film. The human mystery that...