Word: piquant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reporters do is get the news. The next thing, usually, is to round up a few experts to say what it all means. Too often, what gets experts quoted -- and called again the next time news relates to their specialty -- is not specific knowledge of a case but crisp, piquant opinion. The expert enjoys the publicity; the journalist enlivens a story. The losers are the public, who get ill-informed speculation masquerading as analysis, and the news subjects, who are assessed in intimate, knowing terms by strangers...
Throughout his manual, O'Rourke maintains a tone of caustic irony. It fails to disguise a moralist concerned with a lapse of decorum and values. In a discussion of capital punishment, the condemned is told, "Try to think of something piquant to say on your way to the gas chamber. 'See you in hell, Mom,' is nice. Things like . . . 'Don't stop to mourn, organize' sound too stiff for what's basically an informal situation." It is at such times that the mask of the mockingbird slips off to reveal the owl beneath, hooting at a world he is furiously...
...mixed cuisine of the Pacific Northwest -- with its salmon and oysters, wild berries and herbs, tree fruits and game. The best culinary guide to the region is Northwest Bounty by Schuyler Ingle and Sharon Kramis (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). The enticing recipes should inspire Americans across the country to try piquant specialties like pickled Walla Walla sweet onions and such cross- cultural inventions as Sichuan pepper-broiled salmon with cilantro sour- cream sauce...
...embarrassed. "Most of what candidates do is aimed at your television screen," began a Bruce Morton report on the CBS Evening News last week. Campaign appearances are orchestrated for the cameras (George Bush in Boston harbor; everybody in front of the Statue of Liberty), and speechwriters strive for one piquant quote a day aimed at the nightly news (Bush asserts that Michael Dukakis has been "opposed to every new weapon system since the slingshot"). And now come the commercials. The candidates have just released the first of an expected blitz of TV ads: upbeat and "presidential" in Bush's case...
Leading his first Ring, Conductor Barenboim leaves a mixed impression. His predilection for slow tempos is very much in evidence, yet occasionally he bolts precipitately, as in the final scene of Siegfried, when it is all that Polaski and Jerusalem can do to keep up. There is some piquant orchestral detail at times, but at others the texture is crude. Barenboim's challenge is to find a convincing, unified point of view...