So President Obama should begin a new, optimistic narrative line that allows Americans to hope once again.

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Secondly, Apple Computer's history was not a narrative line, but a series of circles in which the company repeated the same victories and disasters over and over.

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You could argue that what has been described as gaffes is in fact plain-speaking that fit well with his general narrative of taking a tougher line than Obama.

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This latest product falls in line with a growing narrative among big emerging market fund managers that China is no longer a pure play export market, but is on the verge of becoming a consumer market.

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And the bottom line is this: The Iranian narrative really does, I think if you do a sharp analysis of this, fall in a quite empty way across the region when compared to the historic changes underway.

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The sci-fi fable might have been better served as a mini-series, or even as a full-blown television series, giving it the elbow room it deserved to explore each story line and each character throughout its time-spanning narrative.

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Thus we should not allow the dramatic power of the most visible narrative, the struggle between oppressed and oppressor, to drown out the sad reality of another less noble story line -- namely that this is still, at least for now, a sectarian conflict.

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