Word: opportunistic
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Pound praised II Duce in his book of 1935, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, for all of the usual things: "grano, bonifica, restauri, grain, swampdrainage, restorations, new buildings..." But clearly he was as much as anything else, carried away by his own rhetoric. In the same tome he called Mussolini an "OPPORTUNIST who is RIGHT," an "AWARE INTELLIGENCE," who was introducing "a new LANGUAGE in the debates in the chamber." He was according to Pound, a statesman of "deep 'concern' or will for the welfare of Italy," right down to "the last ploughman and the last girl in the oliveyards...." It seems...
Political Houdini. To his critics, he was not so much pragmatist as opportunist, a kind of political Houdini ready to do contortions on any issue to get out of a tight situation. British entry into the Common Market was the prime example. Wilson was for it when he was Prime Minister in 1969, then vigorously opposed it two years later when he was out of office and polls showed Market membership to be unpopular, then reversed himself again in 1975. But his deft handling that year of the referents dum ratifying Market membership ended a long, divisive domestic debate...
Although individuals could show human values, anyone in a large group was only a pawn in the game. Even the liberal Dubcek figure in Deltchev turns out to be bogus--a political opportunist. Given the climate of the times, Ambler found himself a pawn as well: I found an old early fifties 25-cent paperback which screams...
...funny, they should not be disappointed with the show. Mark O'Donnell, taking his cue from the stuffed crocodiles over the Pudding's mantel, manages to change a repugnant beast and a vicious sport into a joke. Tots in Tinseltown mocks elitism, the quest for social position and the opportunist money-grubbing that buys such status. O'Donnell's game is played by the Peabodies and the Woolworths, who cavort on stage, singing "We went and bought ourselves a lot of mystique..." The audience--Pudding members, patrons, and impressionable followers--love it. They clap and laugh at the lyrics thrown...
...Pier Paolo Pasolini was, then, a political phony, a mediocre poet, an opportunist filmmaker capitalizing on the Roman desire for circuses with lots of blood and sex, and if his death was such a senseless piece of violence--why all the fuss? Was the shock expressed by all Italy, and especially Rome, merely political propaganda of the PCI, melodramatics of the intellectual elite, and bloodthirsty scan-dalmongering on the part of the greater public? Of course all this contributed to the clamor, but there was something else behind the strong reaction of the students who marched through Rome in mourning...