Word: shrewd
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...bundle of nerve and other people's conventions (a little Mae West, a touch of Judy Garland, maybe all three Andrews Sisters rolled into one). But if as a performer Midler conjures up an older, bolder show-biz era, she doesn't nostalgize it. She gives it a rude, shrewd yet affectionate twist, satirizing and energizing it for contemporary audiences...
...even middling sitcoms like The Patty Duke Show are more effortlessly engaging than most of the nervous joke machines that pass for comedies today. Good ones like The Dick Van Dyke Show remind us that the trivial plot lines of old domestic comedies were often a mask for shrewd satire of suburban neuroses. The best ones, like I Love Lucy, which invented the vocabulary for the modern sitcom, have the formal perfection and infinite repeatability of great pop music...
...government meddling to his eager staff of deregulators. The council spearheaded Quayle's attack on lawyers and excess litigation last August, and is preparing to move beyond reviewing new regulations to tackling rules already in place. While Quayle's detractors dismiss the Vice President as silly and feckless, his shrewd handling of the council's affairs is just another sign that he is taking full advantage of his office...
...specter of free agency can make even a shrewd organization nervous. The Pittsburgh Pirates, with a core of fine young stars, got that now-or-never feeling this year. Why? Because slugger Bobby Bonilla is expected to become a zillionaire elsewhere this winter, and Most Valuable Player candidate Barry Bonds may walk next October. Pittsburgh, in a modest TV market, certainly can't afford them both. So the bucks -- and the Bucs -- stop here...
...LADY OF THE TORTILLA. When he's not winning Emmys for writing Sesame Street, Luis Santeiro is a shrewd satirist of fellow Cuban Americans, as in this off-Broadway piece about a woman's religious vision arising from scorch marks on her dinner...