Word: opportunists
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...least had the sense to depict the concrete human characteristics of the trio's surrounding presences--the grasping mediocre manservant. Ganya Ivoglin, his drunkard father and consumptive brother, the soft headed but sweethearted Madame Yepanchin with her sheltered virgin of a daughter; and Lebedev, a disgustingly, dissipated opportunist and hanger-on who has left his family behind him and come to St. Petersburg to find a master who will leash him. Let these come into the action and the audience senses a full, real context (though their actions and dialogue are as stylized as those of the other three...
...Leader Barzel, who took over the reins of his party last year. A former Minister of All-German Affairs, Barzel is a gifted orator and highly intelligent tactician-with an image problem that he has never been quite able to shake. Critics variously complained that he was an ambitious opportunist and as "spontaneous as a robot." This time, perhaps to give himself a more statesmanlike image, Barzel abandoned the slashing political style that voters had come to expect from him, and conducted a deliberately low-key campaign. He performed well, but seldom turned crowds on, and somehow gave the impression...
Perhaps the kindest cut is that Barzel's image has been compared with that of both Lyndon Johnson, as a behind-the-scenes manipulator, and Richard Nixon, as an ambitious opportunist. Barzel tells his aides that "the people should look at what I have done, not just at my image." Even so he has been trying to improve that image by toning down his speaking style and trying to project himself as a thoughtful, issue-oriented leader...
...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...