Word: machiavellianism
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This comes from centuries of Kings, Popes and Presidents acting out the gap between principles and applied statecraft. Says Guy Sorman of Paris University's Political Studies Institute: "Most Frenchmen believe that political power and foreign policy should be Machiavellian. Today when President Mitterrand is called a Florentine -- meaning a Machiavellian -- it is meant largely as a compliment. What Frenchmen dislike is naivete...
...OTHER SIDE of the tally, however, is Lydia Bruce's key performance as Bessie. Her Machiavellian machinations to keep her family in line seem to have no motivation other than sheer perfidy, and when she does try to explain herself all she does is whine. One problem right off the bat is the Jewish dialect which seems like an alien tongue to most of the actors, as they try to wrap their mouths around convoluted phrases like "So bad I never imagined you could be!" One small complaint, only for purists, is that there is not one single Yiddish word...
There was also some question about Bachrach's character. For years, in some unfathomable Machiavellian calculus, he had pretended to be Jewish...
Peretz's most bizarre accusation is that Bachrach engaged in some "Machiavellian calculus" by pretending to be Jewish for years. During that time, Bachrach has run for the State Senate in a district with a tiny Jewish population. I recall him telling me once how he responded when an Armenian constituent asked him whether he was an Armenian. Bachrach told him that as a Jew whose family had experienced genocide, he thought he understood the Armenian experience a bit more compassionately...
Peretz owes his readers an explanation as to why a Machiavellian politician who lives and runs in a non-Jewish district might pretend he was Jewish when he was not. To say that his Machiavellian calculus is "unfathomable" is either to acknowledge that it was not Machiavellian at all, or that the underlying facts are simply wrong...