Word: opportunistic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...threat to party unity, Barzel reversed course, and only three hours before the final Bundestag vote, ordered the C.D.U. Deputies to abstain from voting. By opting for party unity instead of statesmanship, he earned the widespread condemnation of the West German press and reinforced his reputation as a political opportunist...
...helps to debunk the image of Gertrude Stein as blue-stocking and "great Jewish Buddha," by quoting Braque's comment that "Miss Stein understood nothing of what went on around her." Admitting that this judgment may be too harsh. Day concludes that Stein was an intelligent and lucky opportunist, "clever enough to make herself indispensable to those at the center...
...came into world prominence during the post-Stalin thaw. Yevtushenko recited his poems by memory, but this poem, being but a few hours off his poem pad, he read. There was about it the quality of improvisation, complete with jazzy tone changes: bombs to balalaikas. Here was Yevtusheno the opportunist at work. At least one can say he is open about it. "My feat of not expressing myself on some topic," he says in his preface to Stolen Apples, "makes me express myself at times too superficially." That's honest enough, but what kind of poetic premise is total topical...
Through the '50s, Irving continued to travel and write. In 1957 he published his second novel, The Losers, a New York chronicle of a businessman-idealist and an artist-opportunist. It is narrated by a cartoonist. With great pride, Irving quotes Poet Robert Graves as calling it "the best short novel I have read in 20 years." That is by far the most extravagant praise his works have ever drawn. His next book, The Valley, was an adult western published in 1961. In 1966 came The Thirty-Eighth Floor, about an American black who becomes acting U.N. Secretary-General...
...students in the room considered that position refreshing. "He's no ruthless opportunist," they used to say. "Just think, he doesn't even want to be President...