Word: fig
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...moments like that one--when coke and kids mix, brought together in Carr's life and his language--that you realize how successfully he has woven his tale. If the reporting device started out as a "fig leaf," to keep him from obsessing about "adding to a growing pile of junkie memoirs," it doesn't end up that way. The Night of the Gun is in part a writerly exercise in defense and disarmament--memoir in the throes of an existential crisis. But that does not prevent it from being a great read. This is largely because, in using...
...rape rate in the world, ethnic cleansing of white citizens, the national electricity provider unable to satisfy power needs, and more than half of municipalities approaching bankruptcy. Cynics now predict that South Africa will become the next Zimbabwe. This is Mandela's real legacy. He is the genial, smiling fig leaf that duped the world into believing South Africa would prosper under an ANC administration. Allan Banfield, Hatfield, England...
Despite Betancourt's obvious charisma and attractiveness, she had not a fig's chance of winning her 2002 campaign for the Colombian presidency at the time of her kidnapping. Her Green Oxygen Party had only one parliamentarian, who came from the area to which she traveled disastrously the day FARC rebels nabbed her. This past week Betancourt has said she does not know yet when she will return to Colombia, or what exactly her role will be. But she clearly has her eye on returning to Colombian politics, having penned a 190-point program while she was a hostage...
...Worse, it confirmed what many green activists had long feared - that the fig leaf Silva had provided her boss was stripped away, leaving his image unprotected and exposed, like the environment itself...
...settlement was hard for Mitzi to swallow. "It was against my basic philosophy and the principles of the Comedy Store that this settlement was made," she told the Los Angeles Times's William Knoedelseder. "You might say I was unionized into a corner." Mitzi got a fig leaf of satisfaction three years later, when an administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the comedians, as independent contractors, could not be unionized. "In my personal view, workman's comp, benefits - those were always in the back of Mitzi's mind as something that would break the Comedy...