Word: opportunists
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...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...
...fixer for Chairman Mao, Chou is China's chief executive officer. Though his influence is powerful, he is "a builder, not a poet," as Journalist Edgar Snow says. Chou is usually described as a "moderate" or a "pragmatist." But he is also, in all senses of the word, an opportunist. To some of those who knew the patrician Premier when he was starring in student theatricals (once in a female part) in the Teens, he is a skillful dissembler, not to be trusted in any circumstances. But most Westerners who have met Chou would agree with Henry Kissinger, who said...
...reverses this decision and apologizes for having made it." Another Californian, former Marine Captain George Brokate, publicly threw into a trash can a plaque of appreciation he had received from Nixon for donating $13,000 to his successful presidential campaign. He denounced Nixon as "just another tricky weather vane opportunist politician...