Word: maladroit
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...convinced he is being exploited; his very smart, very pretty girlfriend (Tyra Banks), who is coolly intent on using the system to her advantage; a young white woman (Kristy Swanson), victimized by date rape, tempted by lesbianism, ultimately redeemed and betrayed by her idealistic political activism; a socially maladroit loner (Michael Rapaport), who finds a dank spiritual home with the local neo- Nazis. The rapper Ice Cube is on hand as a perpetual graduate student and guru to the black activists. Laurence Fishburne represents adult authority as an arrogant, challenging and ultimately wise and sympathetic political-science professor...
...when President Clinton began to speak, the atmosphere changed. Clinton laid into his aides for leaking information to the press and lamented his Administration's maladroit handling of the gays-in-the-militar y crisis. He warned his team to stop dumping on each other in print, to "rise above the Washington culture" and "live by your values, not theirs." The clear message, said a staffer, was that Clinton still believes he can change the way things work in the nation's capital...
...with the way all debates since 1960 have been organized. Multiple questions and time-limited answers (no candidate has ever been granted more than three minutes to respond; this year the maximum is two minutes) do not lend themselves to serious exploration of issues. Also, reporters have often been maladroit questioners -- precious minutes were squandered in the second 1988 debate when Bush and Dukakis were asked to name their heroes...
...experience in national government or politics to shake up the way Washington works. (If Perot's candidacy were a movie, the title might be Daddy Warbucks Goes to Washington.) But such speculation is premature: Perot might not run, his record might not survive public scrutiny, he may prove a maladroit campaigner, and his damn-the-torpedoes style may not sit well with voters. Still, the Bush camp, having already survived third-party threats from Buchanan and hatemonger David Duke, is taking Perot very seriously indeed. "There is contingency planning going on," says a senior Bush campaign adviser. "In places...
Along the way, though, a lot of the fun goes out of this tale of a maladroit family and hapless, unwilling tax inspector. There is a dark and extremely unamusing family secret that has made the Catchprices so miserable and so horrid to one another. What begins as slapstick evolves into tragedy, and Carey does not adequately prepare the ground for this transition. In the end, a reader is left with the uncomfortable sense of having laughed in all the wrong places. If that was Carey's intention, he succeeded, but he should perhaps expect only a muted form...