Word: shrewd
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...seem to be nothing more than a formidable reactionary. "He travels in an ox wagon always one length behind the train of history," a ranking British official observed last year. But Vorster is a pragmatist by comparison with many of his Afrikaner colleagues in government and a very shrewd politician as well. Thus, the new constitution could be interpreted as a concession to white moderates, including the verligte (enlightened) wing of the National Party, in that it gives coloreds and Asians a modest role in government. Conceivably, this gesture toward multiracialism in South Africa could be a first step toward...
Jenkins' good ole boy heroes are just the same. Billy Clyde Puckett (Burt Reynolds) is still a natively shrewd running back with a gift for putting on people who think they're smarter than he is because they don't talk in a Southwest Conference drawl. His roommate and lifelong good buddy, Shake Tiller (Kris Kristofferson), is still a sticky-fingered end and an earnest naïf. They are still involved, more as pals than as lovers (though that, in time, develops) with Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh). She is a version of that most delicious...
...Fonzie, the motorcycle-crazy greaser of Happy Days, he raises '50s cool to the boiling point. The Fonz is no different from the hero of any other ABC sitcom, but Winkler does not settle for mugging his way through the role. Instead he galvanizes the tube with shrewd comic timing and swaggering sexuality he gives the audience Bugs Bunny crossed with James Dean, and each week some 47 million Americans go wild...
...Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, le Carre chronicles the efforts of a demoralized Secret Service to regain its reputation and, more important, its sense of self-respect, in the wake of its infiltration by a Soviet double agent. The task falls on the shoulders of George Smiley, typically a shrewd but atypically a paunchy and unglamorous secret agent. Moving to the offensive, Smiley assigns Jerry Westerby--dubbed "the honourable schoolboy" for his noble lineage and his bookish manner--to snarl the operations of the Soviet spy network. In usual fashion, Westerby's mission takes him to Hong Kong and Indochina, into...
...five days, he lay on a bed in a "dark den" handcuffed to a radiator and guarded by four men whose faces were covered by ski masks. But Dutch Multimillionaire Maurits ("Maupie") Caransa, 61, who was kidnaped on Oct. 28 outside his club in Amsterdam, remained a shrewd businessman throughout the ordeal. And, as it turned out last week, business-rather than terrorism, as had originally been feared-was the name of the game. By Caransa's account, the kidnapers first demanded a ransom of $16 million. After two days of haggling, Caransa, whose real estate, hotel and other...