Word: protean
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...good effect when the Viet Nam debate became virulent, or when the nation became confused and distressed over racial unrest. He might have survived the assault if he had earlier amassed a reservoir of popular confidence. This he had never really done. He tried to come across as the protean President, large in heart and body and energy, but that aura was not consonant with all-too-accurate stories of his pettiness, his bullying of aides, his unnecessary deceptions. His lack of candor about Viet Nam and about less substantial issues became chronic...
HORROR stories of the grimmest complexion filtered through the week concerning the imminent disintegration of the HRO's impending Beethoven Ninth concert. The Choirs, supposedly stripped of their talents by the reorganization of the Glee Club, were said to be less than protean musicreaders, and in general hopelessly inadequate to the almost insuperable vocal difficulties of Beethoven's masterwork. And so, as I entered the hall I remembered Robert Scott's famous lament at the end of his diary, written as the merciless Antarctic finally buried him: "We took risks; we knew we took them...
Despite all this, concludes Lifton, the "militant rectitude" of the revolution continues to be threatened. The dan gers, he says, lie in the protean nature of man, whose "psychological style is characterized by easy shifts in belief and identification...
...circumstances were cruel enough: son of a house already in tragedy's grip, father of ten with the eleventh expected, symbol of the youth and toughness, the wealth and idealism of the nation he sought to lead?this protean figure cut down by a small gun in a small cause. Crueler still, perhaps, was the absence of real surprise...
...price of admission in itself. I will term Thomas Babe a gifted mimic, Susan Channing an actress of tremendous range, Dean Gitter the possessor of one of the most authoratitive stage presences about, Tommy Lee Jones an actor with a true gift for insightful readings, Stephen Kaplan a protean comic figure, and Marilyn Pitzele a remarkable dramatic and comic singer. Each term will fit the rest of the cast as well, and as may well be imagined, the permutations are incredible. I leave you to work out the details...