Word: benignities
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Nobody expected Joe Stalin to go on forever giving his imitation of a benign Cheshire cat. U.S.-British relations were cloudy (see INTERNATIONAL). But the global crisis, which had prompted enormous U.S. expenditures for arms only a few weeks ago, had eased...
...appeared at the State Department for a press conference-not on ECA but on Korea and Japan. The President had not yet announced Hoffman's appointment, although every newsman at the conference knew it was in the works. They tried to make Hoffman confirm it. He sat-a benign-faced man with bright blue eyes, protruding underlip and long nose-ducking an answer. The newsmen buzzed after him out the office door. Someone asked if he would accept the job if it were offered. Said Hoffman imperturbably: "The first thing I would do would be to phone my wife...
Containing only the lightest and most digest-able materials, "Sitting Pretty" is easy to enjoy in a light mood. Often in the past the movies have given suburbia benign pokes in ribs, and this one, a kind of combination of "Claudia" and "Blondie" is among the best of the genre. As usual nothing much happens; a number of people think something, especially cuckoldry, is happening; but the audience, smugly aware that everything's just fine, keeps its happiness and its equanimity...
...perfectibility. This perfectibility is being achieved through technology, science, politics, social reform, education. Man is essentially good, says 20th Century liberalism, because he is rational, and his rationality is (if the speaker happens to be a liberal Protestant) divine, or (if he happens to be religiously unattached) at least benign. Thus the reason-defying paradoxes of Christian faith are happily bypassed...
After bestowing this benign "Well done," Cripps wagged a grandfatherly finger. Even if British production reaches his target-140% of the prewar level-the trading deficit with the U.S. will be running at about $1 billion a year. Without Marshall Plan aid, he warned, Britain's dollars and expendable gold reserve will be exhausted by midsummer. Then Britain will "be driven back upon a policy of immediate self-preservation." Cripps meant that, without further U.S. aid, Britain would have to cut off U.S. food, raw material and machinery imports, fall back on barter pacts with other countries...