It's a new and sobering recognition of how poorly the U.S. is doing in terms of health.
Nixon's resignation was a national nightmare but out of that scandal came a sobering recognition that our government needs to be checked.
This, too, was a shocking defeat for Democrats 48 years ago and a sobering recognition of the divisions of the populace.
Although some may find Chan and colleagues' assessment of the state of clinical trial reporting difficult to accept for a variety of reasons, these results should be seen less as an indictment of RCTs as a whole but more as a sobering recognition that wholesale acceptance of the conclusions of a study simply because it uses randomization and placebo controls may not always be warranted.
Instead a sober recognition has settled in Washington that little can be done to expand or improve health coverage while health care costs spiral out of control and the federal budget sinks deeper into deficit.
The movie holds itself between a sober recognition that none of us can be trusted and the more spirited, even stirring sight of lovers straining every sinew to break the cycle of disenchantment and keep their ridiculous promises.
There is also, of course, the sober recognition of the real as opposed to the ideal, as in an admiral's 1691 assessment of captains in the British Royal Navy, evaluating each with such phrases as "a good Man but young," "Good for nothing" and "Turn'd out for a Coward".
The giddy euphoria that greeted this week's hard-fought agreement to reopen the government is fast giving way to a sober recognition that the deal is very unlikely to usher in a new era of co-operation between Democrats and Republicans.
And here, in essence, was the pill that many retiring dancers find hardest to swallow, and that Career Transition is nearly alone in dispensing: the sober recognition that, at least momentarily, a dancer might need to stop expecting a new line of work to match the deep fulfillment of professional dance.
There was a moment or two of laughter — the Christmas-party scene, in which several of them appeared as extras, prompted some excited whispering — but a far greater sense of sober recognition, at the film's representation of the bureaucratic logic that results in the separation of families.
Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan.
