Ponovno predvajanje nedelja, 1. avgust 1993

Anatomy of a Joke

Date: 01 August 1993

By Garry Trudeau

Garry Trudeau

In the wake of last week's press "availabilities" of funnymen Dave Letterman, Jay Leno, Chevy Chase et al., there was much rim-shot critiquing, all of it missing the point. The real jokes, the ones that count, occur not at press events but during those extraordinary little set pieces called monologues. Despite the popular conception of the monologue as edgy and unpredictable, it is actually as formal and structured as anything found in traditional kabuki. The stakes are too high for it to be otherwise. Even the ad-libs, rejoinders and recoveries are carefully scripted. While it may suit Leno's image to portray the "Tonight" show monologue as something that's banged out over late-night pizza with a few cronies, in fact each joke requires the concerted effort of a crack team of six highly disciplined comedy professionals. To illustrate how it works, let's follow an actual topical joke, told the night of Monday, July 26, as it makes its way through the pipeline.

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Sports of The Times; Where Do George's Critics Live?

Date: 01 August 1993

By Harvey Araton

Harvey Araton

HAS anyone noticed that George Steinbrenner has not fired a pitching coach or banished anyone to Columbus for muffing a ground ball in a one-run game? Could it be that he is otherwise occupied tormenting New York politicians? Better it be Mario Cuomo than Gene Michael. Steinbrenner's critics haven't yet caught on that the Boss's stadium crusade is the nicest thing he has done for his baseball team in more than a decade. While the Boss postures to build a new house, like his long, late, distant relative, the Babe, Michael continues to refocus the team and Buck Showalter steers it deeper into the race. May this be the organization's delegation of work assignments until the end of the club's Yankee Stadium lease, in 2003.

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A New Diplomacy of Lost Causes

Date: 01 August 1993

By Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas Friedman

WATCHING the Clinton Administration as it grappled with Bosnia and the fighting in Lebanon last week, it was hard to escape the impression that a new form of American statesmanship had been created: the diplomacy of lost causes. This is a diplomatic art that they don't teach at the Foreign Service Academy. It's strictly on-the-job training. It requires a real skill at averting one's gaze from gruesome news footage; it requires a special knack for using body language to tell people in hopeless situations to surrender to reality, when words would be too brutal; and it requires perfecting that mournful gaze that says to inquiring reporters and historians: "I recommended doing more but the (fill in the blank: Pentagon, President, Congress, allies, public opinion) wouldn't let me."

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Double Talk

Date: 01 August 1993

By Bernard Weinraub

Bernard Weinraub

I COVERED THE White House for a while under Reagan and Bush. And now I cover Ovitz and Katzenberg. It hasn't been an especially difficult transition. Each town hungers for the worst parts of the other. Hollywood's executives and movie stars, embarrassed about their frivolousness and lack of education, crave Washington's exaggerated seriousness, its aura of power, even its pretension and pomposity.

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Retirement At McDonnell

Date: 02 August 1993

By Bloomberg News

Bloomberg News

The McDonnell Douglas Corporation said Friday that its president and chief operating officer, Gerald A. Johnston, would retire at the end of the year because of continued ill health. Mr. Johnston, 62, returned to work at the aircraft, weapons and space-systems manufacturer in October 1992 after a yearlong case of pancreatitis.

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NEWS SUMMARY

Date: 01 August 1993

International 3-17 U.S. GAINS LEBANON CEASE-FIRE

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NEWS SUMMARY

Date: 02 August 1993

International A2-6 LEBANESE RETURNING TO HOMES Thousands of people began streaming back to their homes in southern Lebanon, creating wild traffic jams on roads leading from Beirut to hamlets, villages and seaside towns. A1 John Demjanjuk's departure is delayed by Israel. A5 EUROPEANS ACT ON CURRENCIES Finance ministers and central bank chiefs, seeking a way to resolve a crisis that has shaken the European Monetary System, agreed to devalue most currencies by 15 percent against the German mark. A1

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Tokyo Notebook : NHK News Bores Even More Deeply

Date: 02 August 1993

By Steven Brull, International Herald Tribune

Steven Brull

To Western eyes accustomed to MTV and other highly visual broadcasts, the presentation of news at NHK, Japan's semipublic broadcaster, has long seemed plodding and pedantic. The tempo, though, appears to be slowing, not picking up. .Jiro Hirano, who an

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New York Politics: Polls Show Mayor Unscathed by Riot Report

Date: 01 August 1993

By Alan Finder

Alan Finder

While New York Mayor David N. Dinkins may have underestimated the severity of racial violence in Brooklyn during four days of unrest in August 1991, local politicians and pundits may have seriously overestimated the impact of the Mayor's mistakes on his political future. Mr. Dinkins, a Democrat who is being challenged in his bid for a second term by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican-Liberal candidate, was widely thought to have suffered major political damage two weeks ago when a state report harshly criticized his handling of the disturbances in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

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BACKTALK; Winning Olympic Bid Wars

Date: 01 August 1993

By Dick Ebersol

Dick Ebersol

At 10 A.M. Tuesday, Ken Schanzer, executive vice president of NBC Sports, Randy Falco, the president of broadcast and network operations, and I presented the International Olympic Committee with our bid for the television rights to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Our bid: $456 million. Twelve days earlier, Bob Wright, the president of NBC, and Jack Welch, the chairman of our parent company, General Electric, had approved our evaluation of why Atlanta was worth $55 milion more than what we paid for last year's Barcelona Summer Olympics. We had decided to bet it all on the first-round of bidding -- we expected multiple rounds.

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