Word: guff
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...tactical commanders when he first proposed it last November. They argued that more than 150,000 soldiers could not be moved that far that fast, with all their armor, artillery and 60 days of ammunition and supplies, over a desert with only rudimentary roads. "I got a lot of guff," he recalls. "They thought that Schwarzkopf had lost his marbles." So stiff was their resistance that Schwarzkopf ordered his logistics commander, Major General William Pagonis, to sign his name to a pledge that the troops and their equipment would be in place by the Feb. 21 deadline...
Over the years Picasso has been the subject of much penetrating scholarship, but also of too much guff. There have been hundreds of books about Picasso, but no really satisfactory biography until now. Those written in English tended to be useful but overadoring, like the 1958 life by his close friend Roland Penrose; or deplorably ignorant, like Picasso: Creator and Destroyer (1988), by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington. To draw Picasso whole, in full context, is a daunting task; but now that the first of John Richardson's four volumes is out, one sees that it could indeed be done...
...phone call was especially important. Before the crisis, Japan imported 12% of its oil from Iraq and Kuwait. Nonetheless, Bush persuaded Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu to join the boycott of Iraqi crude. "People are always giving Bush guff for his first-name strategy with world leaders," says an Administration official. "But then he calls Tokyo and gets Kaifu to go along with the oil embargo, a step that may not be in Japan's self-interest. To say we were surprised is to put it mildly." Equally impressive was the President's engineering of United Nations sanctions against Iraq...
HELP WANTED: Savvy, hard-nosed strategist desperately needed to jump-start stalled campaign. Experience in overcoming innate caution of button-down Greek candidate a must. Prior misdemeanors no problem. For the right stuff, we will take public guff. Contact Dukakis campaign...
This is the sort of guff one can hear on The Morton Downey Jr. Show, yet it is one of the perverse pleasures of reading Fussell that he can play the loudmouth and the egghead with equal relish. One of his models is George Orwell, who hid his social pedigree and erudition behind a blunt style that shook comfortable perceptions with irony and contradictions. When Fussell goes to the races at the Indianapolis Speedway, for example, he begins with the standard derisive sociology about the "middles" in the reserved seats and the black-leather set that gathers in the muddy...