Word: shrewd
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That plan went awry last year when Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith made a shrewd deal with three moderate black politicians to form an interim black-white government and prepare the country for his own version of black majority rule. That version enables the country's 212,000 whites to have a disproportionately large representation in Parliament and retain control over the police, the army, the judiciary and the civil service for at least ten years. Last month's elections, though far from perfect, were successful to the extent that they produced a black Prime Minister...
...falling sky, with the other holding up a glinting scimitar, by one lightning stroke he shakes the whole earth." Thus, in language that might have made Mao Tse-tung blush, does one popular song in North Korea stress the godlike omnipotence of President Kim II Sung, 67. As shrewd and tough as he is vainglorious, Kim since 1948 has been the dictator of a belligerent, doctrinaire state that for sheer xenophobia is rivaled only by Albania inside the Communist world. In pursuit of his goal of reuniting the Korean peninsula under his rule, Kim has gingerly begun to open...
...Renfield, the count's bug-eating assistant) are uniformly jolly, the parody of the basic Dracula formula well observed and its social commentary deliciously off the wall. The production's genially tatty air enhances its anarchical mood and encourages one to go with its goofy yet often shrewd comic flow...
Every time the narrative picks up steam, though, Halberstam blows the pipes with hyperbolic cliche. In the space of four pages about Henry Luce, for example, Halberstam calls him "large on the landscape," "brilliant," "incredible," "legendary," "shrewd," "muscular," "powerfully influential," and describes both Luce and Life magazine as "dazzling" within six lines of each other. Almost every one of Halberstam's media moguls are "geniuses," one way or another. Almost every reporter in the book is described as "brilliant" and "fiercely independent." Halberstam's villains, like CBS programmer James Aubrey, fairly drip bile off the page...
...production. A lot of smart choices have been made, the brightest of all being the casting of Robert Duvall and Lee Remick as the leads. Duvall may not look much like Ike-the top of head notwithstanding-but he cuts a forceful figure. His Eisenhower is unfailingly decent, corny, shrewd: a first-rate general who would later grow into a caretaker President. Remick does not resemble Summersby too much either, but who cares...