Word: wrighting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...city awash in scandal, Republicans take comfort in the fact that the sleaze issue has gone bipartisan now that the dealings of House Speaker Jim Wright are under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. By the end of the month, Attorney General Edwin Meese is likely to be skewered in a report from Independent Counsel James McKay declaring that the nation's top law- enforcement officer may have violated Government regulations regarding favoritism and the appearance of impropriety. The G.O.P. response will be to rebut Meese with Wright. Vice President George Bush gave a preview last month: "You talk about...
This line, however, assumes not only that both men are equally guilty or innocent but also that the charges against them are equally grave. And they are not. The accusations against Wright, though serious, are not quite so weighty as those against Meese, and Wright has by far the better defense...
...sure, there are similarities. Both men have been accused of using their office to benefit friends and acquaintances: Meese's former personal lawyer E. Robert Wallach and, in Wright's case, oilmen and investors in the Speaker's home state of Texas. And though the personalities of the genial California-bred Attorney General and the peppery Texas Speaker differ, they are alike in one way. Says Ted Van Dyk, a Washington lobbyist who knows the two: "Both apparently wear blinders" that prevent them from seeing appearances of impropriety in their actions...
...similarities end there. Unlike Meese, Wright has convincingly refuted one of the allegations against him. He supposedly stood to gain personally from lobbying the Interior Department in 1979 to try to win leases for Texas Oil & Gas Corp. Though Wright was said to own stock in the company, he did not: he had an interest in a gas well drilled by Texas Oil, but the operations of that well were not affected by the lease controversy. Georgia ! Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich, Wright's chief accuser, has conceded that this charge was based on inaccurate press clippings...
BEFORE Edward Albee wrote that famous sexual shouting match, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, before he was too old to be an Angry Young Play-wright, he wrote two one-act attacks on convention, complacency and middle-class values. Thirty years later, The American Dream and The Zoo Story have lost some of their relevance--and thus some of their power to disturb the complacent viewer. But Albee's disarming absurdity and brutal frankness remain, and thanks to a talented Harvard/Radcliffe Summer Theater company, those qualities can still make audiences squirm in their seats...