There are comforting and not-so-comforting explanations.
There was nothing comforting in that explanation except for the quaint, old-fashioned term "blue films".
Just as Stalin benefited by being an anti-fascist, Hitler exploited Soviet Russia's association with the idea of world revolution, painting Jews and Bolsheviks alike as internationalist threats.Such circumstantial explanations are comforting, for they suggest that in the absence of similarly extreme circumstances such regimes will not recur.
Intolerance is almost too easy an explanation, implying a comforting moral message.
IN THE past fortnight, the Democrats have come up with lots of comfort-food explanations of George Bush's victory from the idea that the rascal stole the election for a second time (there were a mere 3.3m votes in it, after all) to the notion that he rode into Washington, DC, at the head of an army of hooded fundamentalists.
Instead of a comforting return to the genre, and without proper explanation, the experience can feel slightly alienating.
As a correspondent put it recently: "Why do I want to sleep with my socks on?" The explanation may be straightforward, if not comforting.
"Whatever the explanation," she added, "it's all very comforting.
But is it really comforting for parents of teenagers to embrace an evolutionary explanation for what remain, as Mr. Dobbs puts it, "trying, contrary or flat-out scary moments"?
A local newspaper, The Rio Grande Guardian, reached Mr. Peña later, and his explanation of his presence could not be comforting to Mrs. Clinton.
