Word: shrewd
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...BRADLEY'S ONLY VISIBLY SHREWD MOVE DURING THE RODNEY KING RIOTS was a request for an hour of crisis counterprogramming. Last Thursday he encouraged Channel 4, the NBC-owned and -operated Los Angeles outlet, to air The Cosby Show's farewell broadcast as originally scheduled. Maybe the mayor was just another fan of Bill Cosby's who did not want to be denied closure. Maybe he thought the Cos would calm the populace. Maybe he wanted to give the anchors a chance to repair their hairdos. Or maybe he just wanted to make at least one pair of them shut...
...disaster; the only family that counted with him was the team and the raffish demimonde it inhabited off the field. Ruth fared better the second time around. Claire Ruth (Kelly McGillis, in a brave, hard-nosed performance), a sometime show girl, had nothing against partying, but she was tough, shrewd and -- probably the only kind of woman Ruth could understand -- roughly affectionate, a little bit like one of the guys. In any case, you can't characterize their relationship as either tender or traditionally romantic...
...number of interests, including the powerful timber and utility industries -- have reinforced Clinton's natural bent toward conciliation and compromise. Critics charge that he has been unwilling to fight hard even for programs that he knows are needed if they encounter strong opposition. Allies say he has shown a shrewd ability to focus on the attainable while avoiding battles he could not win. In any case, his record is a mixture of major accomplishments and severe disappointments. Some specifics...
...Howell, who is retiring after 42 years in the Arkansas senate. "He has negotiated the most meaningful gains that anyone could have." Political scientist David England at Arkansas State University agrees: "He has been as effective as any Governor could be in Arkansas," partly because Clinton has shown a shrewd sense of what reforms were attainable and concentrated on them. Says England: "He has taken on only what he thought was possible. Pushing too hard on one thing would have blown others...
...then he leapfrogged over Letterman. Whereas Letterman had once been NBC's choice to succeed Carson, Leno campaigned for the job. Leno is not what Letterman calls "a show-business weasel," but he was shrewd. "The thing that got me the Tonight show," he says, "is that I would visit every NBC affiliate where I was performing and do promos for them. Then they would promote me in turn. My attitude was to go out and rig the numbers in my favor." Nice guys don't finish last when they can also rig the numbers...