His task is not so much to insult his fellow Jews, or the African-American community, as to register amazement at a culture that turns race relations into an article of faith — that seems to believe, against the run of history, in legislating our lower, more brutish instincts out of existence.
Immersed in factual nuance, exacting about sequence and presentation, the historian never steps to the side in his work to register amazement at circumstance, never says, "Look!" For this we have the other arts, fiction front and center, though it doesn't quite do for the novelist to make such a bald declaration either.
He sent a cartoon of them in the sea watched by a fish "registering amazement at what it sees", and adding "O how I want to go to Brighton with you!!" Leigh, whose physical and mental health were often fragile, won her second Oscar for her epic performance in 1939 as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind – a role she won over almost all the leading actresses of the day who were avid for the part.
In a deliciously scathing review, Alan Scherstuhl of the Village Voice suggests that people who hear about the film's mere existence will register amazement that it's "a real movie that actually played in American theaters"; Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times promises that Collateral Beauty is "just bad enough that you actually wish it was worse".
Manuel Lozano, who plays Moncho, has a wide-eyed, slightly pouty face that registers amazement, bafflement and an almost scholarly intellectual appetite.
Registering my amazement, his face falls.
Helen Goodman, the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland and chair of the National Union of Journalists' parliamentary group, has written to Rudd registering her amazement at what has happened.
It is a depressing statistic, picked up by Robert Niles on his online journalism blog and prompting him to ask: "Is any university in America still admitting students as print journalism majors?" He goes on to register his amazement: "Everyone in the business knew that newspapers were shrinking, but dead last?
Now, I am not trying to be nationalistic in registering my amazement at this phenomenon, but I do wish to point to the paradox of a Britain that viscerally tries to defend its political 'sovereignty' vis-a-vis the rest of Europe in general and Brussels in particular, and a Britain that has spent the last two decades losing its commercial sovereignty to all comers, near and far.
His scruffy face registered shock, bewilderment, amazement.
