Word: circusing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...only part of the business. Such athletes have been joined by thousands of other performers, ranging from the likes of renowned Czechoslovak Soprano Gabriela Benachkova, a diva at the prestigious Milan and Vienna opera houses, to Hungarian gypsy bands, Polish striptease artists, Bulgarian pop singers and Rumanian high-wire circus acts. Although the East bloc governments refuse to disclose the revenues they reap from the talent trade, Western economists estimate that contracts for 1986 alone may have amounted to $100 million. Says a Hungarian trade official: "People are one of the few commodities we can sell easily in the West...
...second-rate quality: outdated electronic calculators, low-grade steel, shoddy carpeting. But the East bloc's human exports are often top of the line. Many of the most talented performers have been trained from as young as age six at rigorous state-run sports or music institutions. Other stars, circus artists among them, possess skills that are centuries-old specialties of Eastern Europe. Yet Communist governments are so hungry for hard currency to help finance growing debts to Western lenders and pay for imported products that they routinely mark down the price of their talent by one-half...
...dark smoke of riots hanging over the Washington skyline -- smoke giddy with looting and circus, but at last completely rational: a sort of clarity of bitterness...
...village in the Izobilnynsky district, he heard from an indignant mother of six children how the manager of a state store had treated her rudely. The storekeeper was fired. Gorbachev showed some independence from Moscow when he was Stavropol party boss. Turned down for state financing of a permanent circus building, he solicited funds from local organizations and institutions and got the building put up anyway...
...snickers, as Babbitt pointed out, Hart's re-entry is not really a laughing matter: it helps neither the Democratic Party nor the country to < turn the critical process of selecting a President into something that begins to resemble a circus. Hart's action was a symptom of the problems faced by his party. "He appears to symbolize the failure of the established field to catch fire," says William Galston, a 1984 adviser to Walter Mondale. Hart's comeback crusade threatens to become a cause of further disarray. As Peter Hart (no relation), a Democratic pollster, says, "It's destabilizing...