Word: prosaic
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What powers America and the Soviets do have lie largely in influence, but that too is limited. The glorious clash of ideologies that characterized U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1950s, no matter how wistfully zealots recall it, has evolved into a prosaic contest on practical grounds: inventories of weapons, competitions for the hearts and minds of countries going broke. Yet our opposition to the Soviets remains serious and abiding. The Soviet view of the state and the people creates an institutionalized barbarism that Americans logically must oppose; and the Soviet leaders, if they are to hold on to what they...
...crux of the Government's case, however, is more prosaic than murder. It details a Commission-endorsed scheme to rig bids and allocate contracts to Mobinfluenced concrete companies in New York City's booming construction industry. Any concrete-pouring contract worth more than $2 million was controlled by the Mob, according to the indictment, and the gangsters decided who should submit the lowest bids. Any company that disobeyed the bidding rules might find itself with unexpected labor problems, and its sources of cement might dry up. The club dues, actually a form of extortion, amounted to $1.8 million between...
None of the past chapters in Tisch's business career could have prepared him for his latest incarnation as the acting chief of a broadcasting company. Until last summer, Tisch had confined most of his investments to firms in more prosaic lines of business. CBS is his first really glamorous investment. Last week Tisch was delighted to find himself in a CBS control room watching the morning news show in action. Said he: "I've always wanted to do that...
Unforgettable images, so one says; yet democracy is always more picturesque seizing government than governing. If peace and order continue, the show from the Philippines will be off the air in a week, and the ecstatic new government will stop dancing and stare coldly at its prosaic problems of too many insurgents and too little money. Then it may still be easy enough to recollect the plot and the cast of the revolution. But will you remember the theme...
...spangly, fairy-tale part of the First Lady's role may reach its apotheosis in the State Dining Room. Yet even state dinners are, to Nancy Reagan, an agglomeration of hundreds of prosaic checklist items. She approves and tastes beforehand virtually every item on every menu. During the first term, she spent roughly 450 hours planning 30-odd state dinners. She presided at nearly as many other official dinners, as well as an additional 250 official White House functions, the picture-perfect but surely enervating flurry of luncheons, teas, receptions. Such occasions require a deep well of small talk...