Word: hapless
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...years more than 20,000 applicants have joined such pools, which could get a boost from legislation pending in Congress that encourages states to create them. That measure may be helpful, but it is unlikely to ease the continuing pressure on private insurers to allocate more funds to the hapless AIDS victim...
Bank Robber Daniel Candelairo had just sprinted out the door of California Savings & Loan in Oakland last summer, when his getaway was rudely interrupted. The bundle of cash he had stuffed into his pocket had been booby- trapped with a security device. The wad exploded, disrupting the hapless thief's escape and causing second- and third-degree burns around his genitals...
...congressional committees in particular were stunned by the media monster they created. Fitting punishment for their hypocrisy: first, the committees create a courtroom drama, complete with sharp lawyers shredding hapless witnesses on live television; then the committees complain that America has been captivated by a witness's manner instead of concentrating on his words and deeds. Can't have it both ways. Turn an inquiry into a spectacle and you cannot protest that the audience is insufficiently attentive to the transcript. The Iran-contra committees could have modestly pursued their business off-camera, as did the Tower commission. No secrecy...
When Dorothy Parker remarried her ex-husband Alan Campbell in 1950, she looked around during the reception and said, "People who haven't talked to each other in years are on speaking terms again today, including the bride and groom." A corrosive reviewer, Parker once slated a hapless author as a "writer for the ages. For the ages of four to eight." She could be equally cruel to her nearest and dearest. When Alexander Woollcott, a fellow jouster at the Algonquin Round Table, recalled an afternoon of book signing with the smug rhetorical question "What is so rare...
...good. Some 200 protesters rallied at Richmond's city hall, chanting "He must go!" and listening to local politicians denounce Singleton. Said Mayor George Livingston: "My suggestion would be to put him on the barge where that garbage is and let him float away from here," referring to the hapless Long Island vessel that has been searching for a dump site up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts...