Word: fecklessness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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With a fine command of Irish idiom, Cork man Gibbings tells the story of two people who were forced to live the lives of Stone Age man and woman in the Australian bush. One was John Graham, a feckless County Cork boy, who was transported for seven years for stealing six pounds of hemp. Assigned as convict-servant to a brutal farmer near Sydney, Graham grew sick and sore at a system by which a man might get as many as 1,600 lashes of a cat-o-nine-tails in a three-year period. He absconded into the bush...
...Cabinet of Labor's Clement Attlee, writer of whip-witted prose on legal subjects. Most notable of his works: The Strange Case of Alger Hiss, in which he concluded that Defendant Hiss (see PEOPLE) was unjustly convicted of perjury, the case a monument to feckless U.S. justice and the jury system...
Last March, when Nigeria's Federal House of Representatives voted to seek independence, Abubakar Balewa, the Northerner, warned his countrymen against the results of such feckless politicking. "We must do all in our power," he said, "to protect our country from the civil discord and strife into which some countries-and here I am thinking of Indonesia-have fallen after achieving independence." The Colonial Office, in its anxiety to see that the transfer of power is peaceful, has an even more unhappy comparison in mind: that of India and Pakistan, whose baptism of freedom took place in a bath...
...Aylward, as Chamberlain's God-fearing wife, uses forth-right gestures and voice to create a strong characterization. As Oona, Cathleen's foster-mother, Gail Kepner shows perfectly adequate control of a dull part, but her attention, understandably, often wanders away from it. Liam Clancy, who looks like a feckless young Irish poet, plays one, but with mere wistful lyricism; his voice lacks distinction as much as his spirit lacks life. Finally, the two devils, despite their appropriate looks, need shape, and are neither enticing nor sympathetic nor humorous...
...yore, the flesh is willing; but the spirit is weak. The spirit, in fact, has just about vanished. The songs have no lilt, the lyrics no verve, the sketches no crackle. The dancing has its bits of color and movement, but never the slightest distinction. In such feckless fandangos, the better performers-Billy De Wolfe, Harold Lang and Helen Wood-are largely wasted, while most other performers only make things worse...