Word: deft
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...Nevada explosion, designed to test the effects of radiation on American warheads, will underline in the bluntest possible manner the swift White House rejection of the Kremlin's latest arms-control overture. With the deft mixing of propaganda and substance that has been the hallmark of his style, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev went on television two weeks ago, with no advance word to the U.S. through diplomatic channels, to propose that President Reagan meet him promptly in Europe to negotiate a total ban on nuclear tests. If the U.S. rejected the offer and continued testing, Gorbachev warned, the Kremlin would...
Playwright A.R. Gurney Jr. is a cocktail party charmer--funny, deft with words, genially self-mocking and ever ready to step in before the discussion gets too heavy. His best plays, The Dining Room and The Middle Ages, have been set at social events and have had the rambling, episodic quality of witty but wayward conversation. Not surprisingly, a fiftyish college professor who fancies himself capable of shaping an ideal evening is at the center of Gurney's sprightly new puzzle box of a play, The Perfect Party...
...Philippines, a former colonial ward, partly because of the strategic importance of U.S. bases there, and partly because of what the White House saw as a timely confirmation of one of its most controversial foreign policies. In a meeting with journalists, President Reagan argued that the Administration's deft handling of the Philippine crisis strengthened the case for increased U.S. aid to the contra rebels, who are battling the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Explained Secretary of State George Shultz, who followed Reagan at the briefing: "We see in Nicaragua, much more than in the Philippines, a government at odds...
...questions: "I want to know who the men in the shadows are/ I want to hear somebody asking them why/ They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are/ But they're never the ones to fight or to die." This is angry, aggressive songwriting, too deft ever to be dogmatic, too melodic ever to turn strident. Lawless Avenues, co-written with Jorge Calderon and driven home hard by Jim Keltner's full-torque drumming, is the album's centerpiece, a contemporary street epic set in a Southern California barrio, where none of the characters...
...without altering its basic tenets. Same ends, more efficient means. That seems to be the guiding principle of what will become known as the Gorbachev era. In Kremlin foreign policy, there has already been a noticeable change, not so much in goals and substance as in method and style. Deft and often deceptive flexibility rather than rigid continuity is now the order...