Word: colossus
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...these ups and downs stem directly from accounts of the mismanagement, which reached epic heights, or perhaps depths, at PTL. From a jury-rigged studio, which began broadcasting in 1974 from an old furniture store in Charlotte, Jim and Tammy Bakker had nurtured a Christian entertainment colossus. But the mountains of documents at PTL show that the ministry ran, almost literally, on a wing and a prayer. At one time the ministry spent employee retirement funds to pay operating expenses. PTL had no reliable internal audits, no checks and balances for financial accountability and often no receipts or other devices...
...contras. "The United States insists on using force, and we reject force," complained a diplomat at the meeting. Luis Gonzales Posada, Peru's Ambassador to the OAS, said U.S. support for the rebels "makes the situation worse." Meanwhile Miguel d'Escoto, Nicaragua's Foreign Minister, charged that the "colossus from the north" was the cause of the "problem in Central America and the problems in Latin America." His deputy, Victor Hugo Tinoco, warned that as a result of U.S. intervention in the region, the danger of a war between Nicaragua and Honduras was growing...
...well-to-do Philadelphia cigarmaker, William Paley bought a chain of 16 struggling radio stations in 1928 and nurtured his enterprise into a communications colossus. By the mid-1960s, when he reached retirement age, Paley had earned the right to rest on his legend. Yet he decided to remain as chairman and chief executive, leading to the departure of the man who had long yearned for the job, CBS President Frank Stanton. In the years that followed, Paley put a succession of heirs apparent into the president's slot and, in a pattern that became painfully familiar, fired them...
...When the time finally came, last week, for obituaries in earnest, Graves had lived for an additional 69 years. The man who might have been remembered, along with Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, as a bright young British poet snuffed out by war instead hammered himself into a cranky colossus of 20th century literature. His legacy, dispersed through some 140 books and decades of arguments and controversy, should take years to evaluate. The impression that several eras died along with Graves is immediate and probably true...
...more recent technical advances. In An American Oratorio, Rorem's style works effectively with gentle poems like Poe's To Helen, but it misses the force and majesty of Crane's bitter War Is Kind or Lazarus' noble ode to the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus. The reach of the texts generally exceeds the composer's grasp. "The music was written in Nantucket during July of 1983," Rorem explains in a program note. "That July, as it happens, contained a houseful of guests; like 18th century female novelists, I was constrained to create on the sly." Too slyly...