Word: wither
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Franzen has very little quarrel with Oprah. His real problem, and one that he lays out with care all through the book, is with a world in which the interior life becomes ever more threadbare as the means to sustain it--especially the essential consolations of serious reading--wither away. In tones that are sober but never lugubrious, Franzen weighs the pressures upon the self in a culture that manages the neat trick of discouraging real solitude and genuine community, substituting for both the paradox of media-overloaded isolation. "The first lesson reading teaches," he writes...
...People. Adams says the unionists are wrong about the spying, and wrong about the intentions of the I.R.A. Looking a little hurt and recalling compromises his side has swallowed, he accused unionists of engaging in "kamikaze politics" by dragging down the one political process that would make the I.R.A. wither away. After a decade of the peace process, the I.R.A. does seem to be junior to Sinn Fein inside the republican movement. Most reputed I.R.A. leaders are now busy in elected office. But in spite of Adams' denials, and the symbolic destruction of some weapons, the I.R.A. is hardly dormant...
...like North Korea have a chance to use weapons of mass destruction. While a more active anti-terrorist stance is certainly not a bad thing, ditching landmark arms treaties does little to help, and it could do much damage to the United States as international constraints on arms buildup wither away...
...just the big-ticket villains who wither on closer examination. Ted Bundy, one of the coolest criminal customers in recent memory, was reduced to Jell-O in the final days before his execution, sweatily offering up clues to his other killings if only the state would grant him the stay he suddenly, desperately wanted. Jeffrey McDonald, the Green Beret captain famously tried 20 years ago for the murder of his family, was the very picture of the wrongly accused man, until he took the stand and descended into whining and self-pity - pointing a finger with precisely the kind...
...ready to fight, but they're pessimistic about their chances. A White House victory would likely bring an immediate drop-off in the number of sites approved for Superfund status. But of even greater concern to environmental advocates is that the change will see the disincentive to pollute wither away alongside the Superfund coffers. After all, industrial polluters been kept in check by the threat of having to fund costly cleanups...