Word: understood
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...commentary for the cameras of his multimillion-dollar documentary operation. Scratched, bitten and bruised, he would display his wounds like trophies, casually using gaffer tape to bind up a severe bite from a large saltwater crocodile that he had been wrestling in a mangrove swamp. And the Crocodile Hunter understood how his risk-taking made him a cult hero to millions in the 130 countries where his films aired: his fans aped his trademark cry of "Crikey, he nearly got me!" and flocked to his Australia Zoo in Queensland on Australia's east coast...
...containment of prostitution, illegal gambling and organized crime. But Islamist terrorism was a much more imminent threat than climate change (Gore's bugaboo) and a much more serious threat than illegal gambling. In the wake of 9/11, defeating the terrorists had to be America's No. 1 priority. Bush understood this. Had it not been for the Iraq debacle, he would be remembered as the Avenger of 9/11...
...battle is the most fateful he makes, it is here that a President--his instincts, his judgment, his pride and his purposes--is most exposed. If he succeeds, the errors are footnotes; if he fails, the best intentions are just dust. "I guess not many Presidents have been understood in their own time," Lyndon Johnson said, reflecting on all the good he'd tried to do for people, who despised him nonetheless. George W. Bush swats away the judgments that anniversaries invite. "There's no such thing as short-term history, as far as I'm concerned," he said last...
...Just when you think you've got them figured out and rounded up, they give you the slip. Get the lead out of gasoline, and it comes at you through aging pipes. Bury waste and toxins in landfills, and they seep into groundwater. Mercury, at least, we thought we understood. For all its toxic power, as long as we avoided certain kinds of fish in which contamination levels were particularly high, we'd be fine. And not even everyone had to be careful, just children and women of childbearing...
...came in every genre guise - doomy film noirs, giddy romantic comedies, even musicals and costume dramas. The point was to unleash some central passion and then throw in a murder or a sea battle to keep the teenagers happy, which most of the time they were - because they implicitly understood that the movies weren't always being dumbed down to their level, that instead they were being encouraged to try on some adult emotions just to see how they might fit a little later on. There were, believe me, worse ways to pass a summer...