Word: abner
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ORIGIN: Developed at the CIA's behest during the cold war to spy on the Soviet Union, the plane was created by Lockheed's famed Skunk Works unit (nicknamed after the "Skonk Works" in Al Capp's comic strip, Li'l Abner).The aircraft made its first flight in August...
...record: The original Cardiff Giant is on permanent display at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. That fact contains an extra-literary, though no less poetic, irony. Across town, at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, there is a plaque that sheepishly admits Abner Doubleday did not invent the game. At the same time, its text seems to suggest that a little mythology is not a bad thing. Just don't pay too much for too little...
Fortunately, however, the election has retained a modicum of intrigue thanks to its status as a testing ground for a developing liberal response to Republican governance. It all began in late summer, when a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was brutalized by New York City police officers. The officers attacked him savagely, first beating him and then sodomizing him with a toilet plunger. During the incident, one of the officers allegedly remarked, "It's Giuliani time,"suggesting that the Mayor had embraced a laissez faire attitude toward police brutality. Finally, the embattled New York liberals had their issue...
...opposite coast and under the scrutiny of a less sympathetic audience, two Brooklyn cops have exhibited an affliction similar to that of their on-screen counterparts. The torture of Abner Louima was a deplorable act. But, if vitriolic outrage at the perpetrators is the only result of this incident, then we deny real officers the depth that we allow their fictional representations...
Midway through the movie "L.A. Confidential," the three central characters recognize that they have lost their way as police officers. Predictably, the magic of the movies affords them opportunity at salvation. Life is less forgiving. The two cops charged with the assault of Abner Louima have perpetrated an act of evil and will justly go to jail. What few people know is that just one week prior to the assault, the same two police officers heroically re-entered a collapsing building in order to save its inhabitants, despite orders to withdraw from the scene because their own lives were...