Word: yardsticks
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Show business loves two kinds of news: the gritty comeback and the sparkling debut. One sentimentalizes the past; the other sentimentalizes the future. Both burnish the legend of individuality in a largely collaborative medium. By this yardstick, Broadway ought to cheer sevenfold the last and best musical of the season, Kiss of the Spider Woman. Its U.S. debut next week will turn the clock back to high noon for four long-absent old hands aged about 60 and herald the dawn of three substantial younger talents...
...President who has already proved Machiavelli's assertion, asks to be judged by the toughest standard imaginable. Throughout the campaign, Clinton routinely promised a first 100 days reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt's action-filled three-month push to lift America from the Great Depression. No matter that the F.D.R. yardstick is arbitrary -- and even foolish given the blessed lack of a galvanizing crisis like the one America faced in 1933. "I think it's been a very productive 100 days . . . we've made terrific progress," White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said last Wednesday, eight days...
...measured by an ordinary yardstick...
Triples are now the yardstick of the sport. They range in difficulty from the toe loop and Salchow, through the loop, flip and Lutz to the Axel, the ultimate challenge. Senior male competitors do triples routinely, but they are very tough for women who lack sufficient strength. One difference between watching on TV and seeing a competition is that at rinkside, spectators see all 20-odd contenders, not just the top handful. Among the lower rankings the number of falls is shocking. "There's a big element of risk," says Don Laws, who coached Scott Hamilton and knows that...
...country already wrestling with a new tribalism, with racial tensions and cultural clashes that set language and law on edge, cannot afford to slip further into religious contention. Some yardstick of moderation, and perhaps a measure of common sense, is necessary. What is too often missing from all the talk of religious and secular rights is any mention of mutual respect. When people claim the right to pray or not to pray, to worship or not to worship, as they choose, they must also respect the right of others to choose differently. For government to arbitrate in such intensely personal...