Word: genial
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...geared to produce more than it consumes and when nothing would help the economy more than a surge in consumer spending. As the U.S. economy grows in size and complexity and the cost of labor increases, advertising is an indispensable substitute for the personal salesmanship of times past. The genial clerk who used to sell undecided customers with the assurance that "my own family uses it" is steadily giving way to the self-service shopping cart. Today, advertising is the magnet that draws customers into the nation's supermarkets and department stores, and the prime mover of human inventiveness...
...although not doctrinaire in any way--probably the nearest thing to a party label that could be pinned on Messrs. Miller et al. would be Far Out Liberal); the humor is echt British, but not unpleasantly so: an ingenious mixture of the ridiculous, the outrageous, the scathing, and the genial...
Jonathan Miller is probably the most genial of the four. He has devised two monologues--one about lost trousers on the British Railways, and one about the kind of people who buy porno books in furtive shops (books, says Miller, like A History of Flogging in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force)--which he illustrates by cavorting around the stage in all manner of curious attitudes, wildly illustrating, with suitable gestures, various aspects of his curiouser narratives. Miller also gives, in another bit, what is probably the best line in the show: "I'm not really...
...from time to time they seem to give up the battle. Still, Stephen Elliott, who plays the central role of Macheath, might show a little more fighting spirit. His performance gives scant indication that Mackie is basically "a lean man, a mean man." Instead, Elliott's Mackie is a genial musical comedy star who likes nothing so much as playing to the audience. When other members of the cast follow his example, the play loses its undercurrent of irony. Instead of speaking satire, the characters often seem to be reciting situation comedy dialogue...
...major subsidiaries. He was lured away from that post by rival Mannesmann, West Germany's second largest steelmaker (after Krupp), which was searching for a bright young man to preside over its drive for diversification. Scheduled to take over as chief executive of Mannesmann Oct. 1, genial Herr Doktor Overbeck is currently studying the company's operations under the tutelage of retiring Chairman Hermann Winkhaus, 65, this week will fly off to Canada to inspect Mannesmann's steel plants there...