Word: polemicist
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...politicians they cover, the five do change. Sam Donaldson once gave rude behavior its name; he is still stentorian, but on ABC's David Brinkley show, he questions guests intelligently. His colleague George Will has also changed but believes he has not. Will first surfaced as a conservative polemicist. On becoming a highly articulate TV interviewer, he crowded his guests, suggesting that they were not sufficiently militant about intervening in Lebanon, Syria or Nicaragua. If Will emerged seeming bolder and more candid than the person he interviewed, his guest--a politician, a bureaucrat--usually had the disadvantage of being constrained...
...masses of readers Brother Louis, as he was called by the Trappists, redefined the image of monasticism and made the concept of saintliness accessible to moderns. His treatise on meditation, New Seeds of Contemplation (1962), was deemed a spiritual classic. Moreover, the cloistered monk became a pioneering Catholic polemicist on civil rights and the immorality of nuclear war. Merton explored the spirituality of Eastern religions well before other Catholics...
...true polemicist, I overstate. Not all who oppose the Clubs are fanatics. Many, properly concerned about equity, have been misled into thinking it an absolute. Though almost all of us (including many Clubbies) give equity high priority, almost all of us, also, value freedom of association. When values conflict, one must look at the circumstances to decide which deserves priority. In the case of Final Clubs, it is hard to see why the claims of equity should prevail over those of free association...
...eight previous collections of short fiction, South African Author Nadine Gordimer, 60, has emerged as the most influential home-grown critic of her country's repressive racial policies. But that reputation tends to blur some of the finer distinctions of her art. She is not really a polemicist. The portraits of her native land shade softly into irony and indirection; an overriding injustice must be deduced from small, vividly realized details. Her most important contribution to contemporary letters is not a moral message but the brilliant and memorable ways she has found to deliver...
...ELECTION OF RONALD REAGAN and the Republican sweep of 1980 apparently boosted Sen Jesse Helms (R-N-C.) to an unusual position of power on Capitol Hill. An uncompromising far-right polemicist, Helms was given an unanticipated opportunity to peddle his extreme views on abortion, school prayer, and busing. His tirades against anyone left of the conservative hard line, along with his habit of harassing the White House over any displays of moderation, have earned the senior senator from North Carolina a reputation for fearless advocacy--dangerous to anyone who crosses his path...