Word: martinets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After Meese's stolidity and forgetfulness, Don Regan came across as a refreshing model of candor and good humor. In the days before his ouster five months ago, Regan was denigrated as an iron-fisted martinet whose poor advice to the President had only worsened the scandal. But Regan gave blunt answers to the committees and cracked self-deprecating jokes about his tenure in Washington. Describing the President as "not the type that likes to go around firing people," Regan quipped, "That's an ironic statement coming from me." It was clear that Regan had less of a grip...
Born in Linares, a village in southern Spain, young Andres briefly studied the violin. But his teacher was a harsh martinet, and Segovia was unmoved by the sound of the instrument. "The violinists and cellists I heard in the Granada of that time seemed to extract catlike wails from the violin and asthmatic gasps from the cello," he wrote in Segovia, his 1976 memoir. "But even in the hands of common people, the guitar retained that beautiful plaintive and poetic sound...
...identify the distinguishing feature of Baker's two-month stewardship in the boiler room of the White House: "innate civility and kindness." That's an oddity after decades of worshiping brilliance, cunning and toughness. We have had the regimes of the ascetic and cerebral Ted Sorensen (under J.F.K.), the martinet Bob Haldeman (Nixon), the good ole country boy Ham Jordan (Carter) and the Wall Street sharpie Don Regan, who preceded Baker...
...many tears are shed when Clifton Holt, artistic director of the National Ballet Company, is stabbed to death by a drug addict. His dancers had regarded him as a martinet, and his board of directors as a threat to their social ambitions. But what appears to be one more senseless Manhattan murder takes an abrupt turn when the killer is himself killed in prison after bragging that he was paid $24,000 for the Holt job. "Damn," says Reuben Frost, "will all this be in the papers?" Not a chance. For Frost, retired Wall Street lawyer and the dance company...
...always put on a great show, but until recently it has been mostly onstage, not onscreen. At the dawn of her solo career 15 years ago, Bette (rhymes with pet, sweat, coquette and martinet but never regret) declared her intention to become a "legend." She made good on the boast with a song- and-comedy act that elicited raucous laughs and heaving sobs on both sides of the footlights. She was the Callas of Camp, peppering her program with naughty jokes in the spirit of Mae West and Sophie Tucker. Midler's good-timey raunch made her famous...