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ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, december 26, 2010 INSIDE


Don’t dare to Dream


The lost decade of immigration reform. B3


BOOKWORLD,B5 Fistfights over the Constitution The messy road to a more perfect union.


The war for the friendly skies How Boeing triumphed in the jet race. Tehran confidential A reporter’s inside view of Iran.


12 months of challenging everything you know. B2


Why making someone the bad guy feels so good


EZ BD


THEYEARINMYTHS


Peoplewe hated


BY MONICA HESSE U BY ERINMCKEAN I


f you had somehow managed to filter out all the news of Novem- ber’smidtermelections,youcould be forgiven for thinking in the past few weeks that perhaps Con-


gress had finally buckled down, stopped posturing and gotten to work — maybe started early on some new year’s resolutions. Look at all that was passed: a huge compromise tax bill, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a major food safety bill, the New START treaty and the 9/11 first responders health-care measure. That was the work of the lame-duck Congress. But the idea that this Con- gress limped out or was in any way lame seems risible. The 111th Congress capped its re- markable term—which historian Alan Brinkley called “probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the ’60s” — with a flurry of legislative activity that President Obama described as “the most produc-


ntil May 30, Tony Hay- ward was mostly a figure- head, a knobbly Keebler elf of a man with a posh drawl and a big, big oil spill. OnMay 30, the mil- lionaire chief executive,


whose company had just ruined the livelihoods of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, told a reporter, “I’d likemy life back.”


With that, he became a total troll. Year-end lists are usually devoted to


celebrating the people we loved. But so much more could be gleaned from study- ing the people we hated — those who


sparked the moments of righteous indig- nation that made the entire country squeeze onto one creaky soapbox and bellow, “What is wrong with you?” Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bull-


ock. After she said such nice things about him in her SAG Awards acceptance speech.Withthat scarywomanwhohas a facial tattoo. JayLenoreturnedfromhisunfunny 10


p.m. show to reanimate his unfunny “Tonight” show, booting Coco in the process. Mary Bale threwa cat in a trash can—


it was caught on camera — and for this there are no words, just a business-class ticket on the train to hell. As if following a calendar of loathing, these figures arrived at regular intervals,


giving their audience time in between to catch its breath and stockpile newrotten tomatoes. Somewhere, in the green room of skulduggery, the suits from Goldman Sachs rehydrated with water bottles and fist-bumped Hayward for good luck, be- fore he entered stage right as the villain of the month. Allweredespised for different reasons,


welcomed as scapegoats to relieve larger roiling tensions in an unsettled America. Leno represented the establishment,


an insider blocking the rise of the new entertainment class. James and Bale? At a time when people felt abandoned by suits who didn’t understand their needs, when Americans were struggling to fig- ure out their place in a new world order, James and Bale were abandoning . . . America’s Sweetheart and a defenseless kitty. Loathing specific individuals works


like a pressure valve, a collective whoosh hated continued on B4


Monica Hesse is a staff writer for The Washington Post.


BOOKREVIEW It’s not all tutus and sugar plumfairies BY MARIE ARANA


‘Lame duck’ doesn’t really fit the bill


tive post-election period we’ve had in decades.”


Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham


(S.C.) called the end-of-session frenzy “a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions,” adding on Fox News Ra- dio on Tuesday: “Harry Reid has eaten our lunch.” Hardly the activity of work-shirking


goldbrickers intent only on sending out resumes. In that light, perhaps it’s time to stop using “lame duck” to describe the last days in office of un-reelected elected officials. The term’s been in use in American


politics since at least the early 1900s, though it was initially used by 18th- century Britons to disparage people who couldn’t pay their debts. (They “waddled off without paying,” per one 19th-century book on London. Or per- haps, like lame ducks, the debtors “didn’thave a feather to fly with.”)From there the phrase jumped to “politically bankrupt” politicians, according to William Safire’s Political Dictionary. (A


lame duck continued on B4


Erin McKean is the chief executive and founder of Wordnik, an online dictionary, and a former editor in chief for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Her first novel, “The Secret Lives of Dresses,” will be published in February.


B


allet begins at the barre. It is hard work, rigorously disci- plined, unforgiving. It takes brute physical strength, in- tense mental focus and a don-


key’s will. Even the most accomplished dancer begins her morning with five simple positions. By day’s end, she will be defying the limitations of her anato- my, flouting gravity. She will become Apollo, a winged creature, a god. For all the fleet, fugitive beauty of one perfor- mance, a lifetime of excruciating labor willhavegoneinto it.There isnoartistic career more physically and psychologi- cally challenging—ormoreheartbreak- ingly ephemeral—than hers. Though ancient rituals imbue this


art, few dancers understand its long, complicated history. Filled with kings


APOLLO’S ANGELS A History of Ballet By Jennifer Homans Random House. 643 pp. $35


and courtiers, dictators and dissidents, rich and poor, the story of ballet offers a singular perspective on the evolution of our culture: a fascinating mirror on the arts. Nowhere is this narrative told more amply or more compellingly than in JenniferHomans’s triumphant “Apol- lo’s Angels.” Herbookis a delight to read, massive-


ly informed yet remarkably agile. As with the gravity-defying feats she de- scribes, a lifetime of work is behind it: Homans is a former ballerina, a dance critic for theNewRepublic and a distin- guished scholar atNewYorkUniversity. In this opus, she blends extensive re- search and a trouper’s experience to


deliver nothing less than a cultural history of the past 400 years. She begins by telling us what every


dancer knows: that little in this art form is explained, that much depends on a teacher’s memory—that, though it is a mute art, ballet is meant to be alive and present, not packed with a ponderous past. But a past it most certainly has. A precursor emerged in Italy in the 15th century, although the practice of ballet was not taken up in earnest until two centuries later, and only because it was the favorite of a French king. Imagine, if you will, your head of state as the star of a dance festival, arrayed in diamonds, bursting onto the carnival grounds on a magnificent white horse, then leaping


ballet continued on B6


Marie Arana is a writer at large for The Washington Post.


That New Year’s kiss The science of smooching. B3


BIGSTOCK PHOTO


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