Word: inept
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...shoe-shine man who agrees to take the fall--and endure a three-to five-year prison sentence--in place of a mobster accused of murder. In return, he is to be paid enough money upon his release to realize his lifelong dream of owning a boat. Inept mob gofer Jerry (Mantegna) must babysit Gino until the court date. The plot turns on whether Jerry can keep Gino from changing his mind and escaping from his Chicago apartment before the trial...
...final part of the index, grades, is a more effective measure, but it also subject to occasional flaws. Superior students are sometimes inept in a single subject, which pulls down their overall grade point average; this human factor is often accounted for by understanding admissions officers...
Haldeman was worried that his chief would forget to turn the gizmo on when he wanted it, or -- worse -- to turn it off when he didn't. Haldeman also fretted "that this President was far too inept with machinery ever to make a success of a switch system." The result: voice-activated tape recorders were installed in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, and at Camp David. Writes Haldeman: "I think Nixon lost his awareness of the system even more quickly than I did." The machines, of course, forgot nothing...
...1980s have surely been the decade of empire revivalism. From the masterful televison adaptation of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet to an inept film of E.M. Forster's A Pasage to India--even Bertolucci's The Last Emperor--films about imperialism, and particularly its demise, have become hits here and in Europe. Offering torrid plots set in tropical lands, films about empire have the perfect formula for success--glory, romance, violence and politics...
Nonetheless, he had more than his share of frustrations in the job. Associates speculated that he was troubled by Attorney General Edwin Meese's determination to stay in office and by the Administration's inept negotiations with Panamanian Strongman Antonio Noriega. A man who dislikes confrontation, Baker was often reluctant to argue a position with the President. But he maintains that he was not upset by a failure to sway Reagan. "The President makes his own decisions," says Baker. "I've never been disappointed if he goes some other course. All that has nothing to do with my decision...