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Shortly after September 11th, President Bushes father observed that just as Pearl Harbor awakened this country from the notion that we could somehow avoid the call of duty to defend freedom in Europe and Asia in World War Two, so, too, should this most recent surprise attack erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism or in anything else for that matter.
But America’s allies have begun to wonder whether that is the lesson that has been learned——or whether the Afghanistan campaign’s apparent success shows that unilateralism works just fine. The United States, that argument goes, is so dominant that it can largely afford to go it alone.
It is true that no nation since Rome has loomed so large above the others, but even Rome eventually collapsed. Only a decade ago, the conventional wisdom lamented an America in decline. Bestseller lists featured books that describ
A. Indifferent.
B. Optimistic.
C. Indignant.
D. Apprehensive.
A closer observer of the small screen once called it a "vast wasteland of violence, sadism and murder, private eyes, gangsters and more violence-and cartoons." That is how Newton Minow, a US television regulator, described it in 1961.
Since then television language has become more colourful, violence more explicit and sex more prevalent. Lady Chatterley’s Lover has moved from the banned book shelf to a classic BBC serial.
Concern over such changing standards has shaped our view of television and masked its broader influence in developing countries.
To illustrate its effects, Kenny cites the case of Brazil. When television there began to show a steady diet of local soaps in the 1970s, Brazilian women typically had five or more children and were trapped in poverty. As the popularity of the soaps grew, birth rates fell.
According to researchers, 72% of the leading female cha
A. The small screen.
B. A vast wasteland.
C. Television language.
D. Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
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