Word: feudal
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...suggested by various teachers. It has to do with the fact that she is deeply Japanese in her outlook and that the call to duty, as well as the promise of love, was strong. On both sides of her family, she is descended from the samurai class, warriors in feudal times, administrators and teachers later. The word samurai means "to serve...
This is excusable because the coaches are geniuses, and thus fragile. And, of course, because they are paid as much at a typical university as the entire chemistry department. They are great personages, feudal barons only nominally under the control of college presidents. Cal Berkeley astounded the civilized world by firing a coach named Lou Campanelli for yelling at his players in a manner deemed insensitive. Much agitated discussion followed. Had the university lost its sense of values or, worse, its hope of national television? Were its ballplayers men or New Age mollycoddles...
Equally noteworthy has been Mobutu's quest for sexual favors among the wives of political associates. "The President enjoys an almost feudal droit du seigneur," explains a former Cabinet minister. "He uses sex as a tool to dominate the men around him. You get money or a Mercedes-Benz, and he takes your wife and you work for him." Says a former longtime resident of Gbadolite: "The complaints of those he has cuckolded only add to his mystique as a virile and powerful ruler...
There is a hardy opposition, however, and its best-known mouthpiece is fire- breathing Labour M.P. Tony Benn. "We are still a feudal society, trying to live off whiskey, tweed and the royal family," he sputters. "The fact is that a Prime Minister's powers are derived from crown powers, and they are greater than a President's. A Prime Minister, on his or her own, can create judges, bishops, lords, send troops to the Falklands. Beside this, Di and Fergie are absolute froth...
...Feudal lords ruled over western Europe, taking their share of the harvests of primitive agriculture and making the forests their private hunting grounds. Poaching was not simply theft (usually punishable by imprisonment) but a sin against the social order. Without the indulgence of the nobility, the peasants could not even acquire salt, the indispensable ingredient for preserving meat and flavoring a culinary culture that possessed few spices. Though a true money economy did not exist, salt could be bought with poorly circulated coin, which the lord hoarded in his castle and dispensed to the poor only as alms...