But the 60s had the small excuse that the full incompetent rascality of the Soviet model was yet to be exposed in its entirety, and a lot of very slow learners were still in thrall to Chairman Mao, to Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe or (as some still are), to Fidel and his apprentice, Hugo Chávez.
Then, the "girls aren't guys" belief changed to, "Well, I'm not doing gang-bangs!" Slowly, over the eight years I spent in the adult business, I made justification after justification to take my "performance" to the next level because of small excuses that made the entire picture excusable, all the while remembering that I originally said, "I'll never do guys".
If nothing quite so dramatic lies ahead of you, however, look for smaller excuses.
And they arrested people indiscriminately, among them the man with the flowers, a group of transvestites and even a small boy.The excuse for all this was that the authorities had denied permission for Other Russia to rally in Pushkin Square.
What a small, petty excuse for a human being.
In a 2012 piece on the Oklahoma City Thunder trading away James Harden for financial reasons, Simmons mocked the "Billionaire Dudes Who Hit The Jackpot With Durant, Hijacked The Sonics From Seattle And Have Been Raking In Money In OKC Ever Since" and illustrated the absurdity of the "small-market" excuse for cutting costs and trading away popular players.
You'll have to excuse Small Talk's ignorance.
Had I walked in while he was talking to her, it would have been a catastrophe: in a town this small, no imaginable excuse could account for a high-school boy having a rendezvous with a strange woman from New York.
Final arrangements being made at "get-together" luncheon at Astor and Chairman Albee about to adjour, when small voice said "Excuse it, but you should remember September 28th is Yom Kippur and 80% of people you count on for support will be at home.
Yet, the really fat slush funds at the City Council and in Albany don't excuse a small one in the mayor's office.
