Word: washingtons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then there is the boner buried in commentary. A classic example of that appeared in a Washington Monthly review of a book of mine back in 1983. The critic mentioned that I ate breakfast with Ronald Reagan at the White House and "spent weekends with the President at Camp David." Neither assertion was true (not one cornflake with Reagan, not one hoofbeat at Camp David). These and similar inaccuracies supported the punch line that excess access might have warped my perspective. The reviewer later explained that he'd lacked the time to check the information...
Stacked up against those three white middle-aged men was an anchor team that made a striking symbolic statement. Washington-based Bernard Shaw, CNN's leading political correspondent, is black; Catherine Crier, based at the network's Atlanta headquarters, is a woman. Inadvertently, the choice of Crier, brought in from outside in preference to 150 in-house anchors and reporters, also made a depressing statement about the abiding importance of looks and packaging in TV news. A former college beauty-contest finalist and later an elected Texas judge, Crier, 34, has no journalism experience...
Rick Atkinson's epic of West Point's class of '66 is marked by such piercing incidents. A Washington Post reporter, he begins by following some 600 freshmen, ruddy and damp in their new gray wool uniforms. Loud harassment is the order of the day ("Pull that neck in, mister. You call that bracing?"). It has been this way since Thomas Jefferson founded the academy in 1802, and in the crowd of intimidated cadets the figures tend to blur -- until destiny selects them for service in Viet...
...neither take nor leave. Jack Wheeler is an idealistic Army brat who loses his military faith in the trenches. Postwar, both men have turbulent domestic lives; both resign their commissions, as do nearly 25% of their class. Both are obsessed by the idea of a Viet Nam memorial in Washington. But Wheeler favors the final design; Carhart, a lifelong iconoclast, censures the "black gash of shame and sorrow, hacked into the national visage that is the Mall." George Crocker, the classic warrior-aristocrat, is far removed from that fray. He distinguishes himself in combat, rises to lieutenant colonel and becomes...
Should the U.S. Government be involved in coups that might result in the assassination of foreign political leaders? That old controversy was being debated with new intensity last week in Washington. In the wake of this month's failed coup against Panama's Manuel Antonio Noriega, the fickle finger of blame is being pointed in all directions. It has been aimed at George Bush, at Congress, at CIA director William Webster and at the coup plotters themselves. Last week it targeted a section of a presidential order that bars all direct or indirect U.S. involvement in assassinations. The issue...