Word: shams
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Before the independence of Angola and Mozambique changed the power balance in southern Africa, it was just conceivable that 274,000 Rhodesian whites could maintain their position indefinitely over the country's 6.1 million blacks, even though the whites were outnumbered 22 to 1. Thereafter it became a preposterous sham...
...introductory note he claims to be giving "free rein to the sincerity of my imagination") the message is lost in a sarcasm as confusing as the shifting allegiances of the political situation it mocks. The overtly cardboard characters of the book fight battles that are all sham; the only thing left dead onstage is belief. Laughing at this skeptical satire is too easy an escape from the complex problems of reality, too condescending a way to refuse to take Italy seriously. Politics is not opera...
...spent a few years writing screenplays (e.g., Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea). In 1951 a disillusioned Ambler, returned with Judgement on Deltchev, about a political trial in Eastern Europe under rather totalitarian circumstances. Though careful not to directly criticize the Soviet Union, Ambler portrays political ideologies as a sham--deluded masses being used as a front to cloak the sinister intentions of the rich and powerful...
Bicentennial Follies is an intriguing concoction. Its authors, Paris K.C. Barclay, Steven Gordon Crist and Mark O'Donnell, have seized on a wellworn theme--the fraudulent underbelly of American life, symbolized by the special sham of Hollywood, attached it to a frankly derivative score and allowed their creative instincts free rein. Their product is far from disastrous--in spite of its flaws, Bicentennial Follies is almost consistently entertaining; but, not too surprisingly, it is hardly a dramatically unified whole...
...much in Vichy because the plan is rammed down the judiciary's throat. Eventually they have to find judges and prosecutors reactionary enough to preside over this mockery of justice. Charges severe enough to warrant execution must be drummed up on at least six people. It's an obvious sham and everybody realizes it--but no one has the guts to contradict orders from above. Only fascist sympathizers or unscrupulous self-serving careerists are willing to be involved with this travesty, and even some of these feel the weight of their consciences...