Word: walt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...still and golden. The summer trees are fat with their foliage. On Fourth of July weekend, I am rereading David Reynolds' splendid book "Walt Whitman's America" (1995). It gives me, among other things, a sense of reassuring continuity. We need the past - good, bad, mythic, squalid - as a counterweight. It is sometimes hilarious to see what a mess - embroiled, quotidian, contemporary - the American past actually...
...Walt Whitman is one of the favorite writers of Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine, who has written a new book called "My Love Affair With America." Podhoretz' subtitle is: "The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative." I admire Podhoretz immensely for the clarity, decency, and, shall we say, ruthlessness of his thought, but "cheerful" is not the first word he brings to my mind. A few years ago at a dinner in a highly WASP old club in New York, I watched Podhoretz sink his teeth (figuratively speaking) into a supercilious liberal's calf...
...that I'd come first in my class," he recalls. He was also expected to follow his parents into medicine. When he told them he would instead study moviemaking at New York University, they were horrified. Now they feel a lot better. In 1997, five years after his graduation, Walt Disney Studios paid Shyamalan $2.5 million for the screenplay of the Bruce Willis thriller The Sixth Sense and let the young writer direct the movie as well. The ghost tale has earned more than $680 million worldwide since its release last year and garnered six Academy Award nominations...
...greater accountability in the schools contend that teachers--not the tests--are to blame for the cheating. But even some backers of tough standards are taking a second look at the tests. "Research shows that using test scores in combination with grades results in a more valid decision," says Walt Haney, a senior research associate at Boston College's Center for the Study of Testing. "The clear solution is to reduce the stakes." Such wisdom is swaying some politicians. Conceding that some tests have begun "to crowd out all other [classroom] endeavors," President Clinton this spring said testing...
...back to the future! I constantly remind my middle-aged seminar participants that George Babbitt and Dilbert are not the quintessential Americans. Who are? Ben Franklin (the father of self-help literature). Ralph Waldo Emerson (self-reliance was his shtick, recall). Walt Whitman. And yes, motivational guru Tony Robbins. And yes, Donald Trump. And... Bentonville, Arkansas' Sam Walton... and Bill Gates...