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Word: inept (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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This is show business? A mime so inept he must describe his gestures to the audience. A grinning, phosphorescent-suited fellow who plays with funny balloon animals. A comic with a bag over his head who does a ventriloquist routine featuring a hand puppet that has a paper bag over its head. A talk-show host who is all smarm and insult jokes. A Carnegie Hall entertainer who shows cartoons, leads sing-alongs and wrestles with women volunteers from the audience. A female comic in Wayne Newton drag who unbuttons her shirt to reveal a forest of chest hair...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Show Business: Comedy's Post-Funny School | 5/25/1981 | See Source »

...excruciating to read as to live through--the deaths of 1000 Americans by "friendly fire" in Vietnam seem more than understandable after reading this book. Perhaps even worse, however, was the real leadership of the war in Washington, which comes across as genuinely evil, pathologically, maybe even intentionally inept, driven by what it wanted to see and not what was there. We didn't understand Asian society--not its structure, not its language, nothing--and we couldn't bomb away a culture. The eyes and voices of this book saw the story of America in Vietnam and, for that alone...

Author: By Jeffrey R. Toobin, | Title: Everything We Already Know | 5/8/1981 | See Source »

...transport itself into this mess? Three groups contributed mightily: pusillanimous politicians who refused to risk their constituents' wrath by asking for fare increases when they were unquestionably essential; inept managers who, despite in many cases handsome salaries and generous expense accounts, proved incapable of managing; and inflexible unions that pushed labor costs sky-high (they account for 77% of Chicago's operating expenses...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Rumbling Toward Ruin | 3/30/1981 | See Source »

...found she was suffering from peritonitis. What's a virile guy like me supposed to do? We're winning the war of words in D.C. too. Ling-Ling -that's my new love object-got her keeper to say that Hubby Hsing-Hsing is "just plain inept," and I like the Washington keeper's rugged sports metaphor, that Hsing-Hsing has to avoid hurt feelings like ''a football player when he's taken off the team...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: Enough with the Jokes, Already | 3/16/1981 | See Source »

...buoyed by the ecstasy of a three-goal lead, the slap on the wrist failed to contain the horde and the taunts and chants--though not the fish--continued. On the ice, Harvard's famously inept power play had no success against the Cornell penalty-killers, and designated jailbird Brock Tredway left the box two minutes later with the score unchanged...

Author: By Bruce Schoenfeld, SPECIAL TO THE CRIMSON | Title: Cornell Denies Icemen, 7-3 | 3/2/1981 | See Source »

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