Word: benzes
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...defining images of the African political élite has been the silhouette of a figure sitting behind tinted glass or drawn curtains in the backseat of a luxury car. The car's model may vary, and the color too, but nine times out of 10 the make is Mercedes-Benz. In Swahili, which is spoken throughout eastern Africa, members of the ruling class are even known by the nickname wabenzi, or "people of the Benz...
...Kenya's wabenzi just got downgraded. Thanks to a government cost-cutting program aimed at saving taxpayers some $27 million, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta announced this summer that government ministers, along with assistant ministers and permanent secretaries, must turn in their ubiquitous Mercedes-Benz for Volkswagen Passats, which not only cost about two-thirds the price of a new Benz in Kenya, but are, says the government, cheaper to run and maintain. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...MacManuses enjoy the unspoken support of the Boston Police Department, which falls all over itself to keep them safe and out of jail as the body count rises. Taking the place of morally conflicted FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) is his protegé Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz), a sassy southerner who stalks the city in Christian Louboutin stilettos and keeps her gun in a leather holster draped about her svelte waistline. Sharing her mentor’s clairvoyant crime detection abilities, she manages to simultaneously anger and entice her male coworkers while conjuring up nearly flawless crime scene...
...candy wrappers. On stage, a DJ spins a steady stream of feel-good tunes, the sounds of “Summer Nights” reverberating off the walls.It’s a far cry from the frenzied, bustling chaos of early autumn in New York City, whose Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, an eight-day whirlwind of runway shows and presentations, came screeching to a halt yesterday. Editors, buyers, socialites, starlets, and It girls converge upon the city biannually to kick off the sartorial festivities along with a sprawling flock of photographers, journalists, and hangers-on, only to later resume...
...control. Their successors behave no differently. Slavery, of course, is now illegal. But are there any moral distinctions to be drawn between a chief who, in order to satisfy his lust for brandy, sells his own people into slavery and the contemporary politician who, coveting a Mercedes-Benz, embezzles the funds of a charity set up to help orphan children?” But, as Naipaul reiterates, even the most glutinous despot is hopeless without a sympathetic, or at least ambivalent host of subjects: “Africans are content with the political kingdom.”Thirty years after...