Word: dourness
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State Department colleagues speculate that if Bloch turned to the Soviets in < Vienna, it may have been out of frustration. A competent diplomat, but a dour, moody man, Bloch was deeply offended at having to serve under two inexperienced political appointees. He dismissed former Ambassador Helene von Damm as a "nut" and Lauder as a "total disaster." After returning to the U.S. in 1987, Bloch openly complained about not getting an ambassadorial post. If, however, he was recruited long ago in Berlin, the frustration theory might not hold...
Seizing on voter disillusionment, the J.S.P. mounted a stunningly effective campaign. Its trump card was Doi, a charismatic politician whose forthright statements and energy offered a refreshing change from the dour-faced, dark- suited politicians fielded by the L.D.P. Campaigning vigorously, Doi and her opposition colleagues promised to rescind the consumption tax and oppose further liberalization of farm imports. "The people are aware of how politics affects their daily life," Doi said during a campaign tour. "It's the politicians who are behind the times...
...steppes like an ungainly old hulk, beached and abandoned, its Stalin-era spires so many masts thrusting into the gloom, and the nearest sea hundreds of miles away. Fair warning, neo-Napoleons! Even with glasnost, perestroika and the Pepsi Revolution, Moscow the impregnable lives on, isolated and forbidding, a dour reminder of what it means to be Russian...
With the exception of Davis, his sidekick Sandman, who constantly interjects his dour-faced humor into the action, and Hines, the actors in Tap are not consistently believable. It is clear that most of them were chosen for their dancing skill and not for their dramatic talent...
...procedures and respectful of its leaders. But last week the Bundestag convened in an unaccustomed turmoil of accusation and recrimination over West Germany's role in building Libya's suspected chemical-weapons plant at Rabta. Members shouted angry questions at a government spokesman, to the visible discomfort of a dour and silent Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "Once again our history has caught up with us," said Norbert Gansel, arms-control spokesman for the opposition Social Democratic Party, referring to the country's Nazi heritage. "Once again the evil, blinkered German is there in the cartoons and the editorials, and the federal...