Word: shrug
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Print journalists who appear frequently on TV have a phrase they use after they say something silly or make a factual error. "It's just TV," they shrug, and you can understand the attitude. The conventions of the TV talk show, circa 1999, inflate the trivial and trivialize the important. Watching Hardball's Chris Matthews bark at his guests about tax plans and sex scandals, you wonder why his guests don't cover themselves with dentist's smocks to fend off the flying spittle. Kinsley recalls that as co-host of Crossfire, the CNN shoutfest, he once disagreed with...
...Governor George W. Bush falling behind in the New Hampshire primary, and after two underwhelming debate performances, the smile with enough wattage to light the national Christmas tree has devolved into the Smirk. It is actually a full-body tic: a pressing together of the upturned lips with a shrug of the shoulders and a preening tilt of the head that signals the Governor is awfully pleased with himself...
Winchell was in a bind: to complain about the abuse would suggest the stories were true. If he acknowledged he was gay, he would have to leave the Army. Better to simply shrug off the slurs. But by the time the fight broke out between Glover and Winchell, the atmosphere was poisoned. "I can't believe it," Glover confided to his fellow grunts after Winchell floored him. "I won't let a faggot kick my ass." But Winchell apparently had dismissed Glover's death threat as more braggadocio. And he didn't relish his win. "Why," he asked a fellow...
Penn does bold justice to this lowdown giant. But Samantha Morton, as Emmet's "mute orphan half-wit" of a girlfriend, is the sweet revelation. Rarely has a performer mined such complex and potent emotion from such simple materials: a smile, a shrug, an attentive winsomeness. She hardly nods or shakes her head in response to a question, yet always conveys the meaning and feeling. In an age of actors' tics and rantings, such austere clarity is worth cherishing. The interpretive magic that Emmet Ray achieves with six strings, Morton conjures with none...
...always say the Creator called them on their cell phones at 11:59 p.m. to say Armageddon was being postponed.The media may have a harder time explaining why they were so relentlessly hormonal about a year just because it had three zeroes in it. But the media usually just shrug and move briskly on to the next installment of the-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it (Gotterdammerung...