Word: sop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their weaknesses. He is mysterious, vaguely dangerous. They know he is not a poet--he confuses the husband, Lewis Fielding, with the author of Tom Jones--but that is about the only thing they know. He is intriguing to them in their boredom and he is a sop to their material guilt. Berger bluntly tells the husband that he, the stranger, is doing them a favor by sponging on them and thereby quieting their uneasy consciences. In addition, this complete intruder appeals to the husband's fears about his wife's faithfulness. Fielding the writer would rather make the adultery...
...drug laws, which are easy to forget if you've been sitting in the suburbs for a while, but on the thruway you pass Albany, and in the distance looms the series of edifices that the ex-governor built with Speer-like glee before he left office, a sop to his ego and construction-industry friends. They are buildings that will still be here when the world ends, inhuman enough for the J. Edgar Hoover Center in Washington to look like a Taos adobe beside them. With that, on a cold day when the windows are bubbled shut tight...
...intention, however, was to have Rockefeller announce his withdrawal first and to reveal the other changes later. That would not only separate the political and staff issues but give conservatives a reason to be so pleased with Rocky's demise that the Schlesinger dismissal might seem only a sop to the party's moderates and liberals...
...from matters uniquely concerning women, Françoise Giroud, France's Secretary of State for Women's Affairs, termed the conference a "total failure." Other women took a more positive view. Representative Bella Abzug of New York said that while the conference was perhaps "intended as a sop, we did talk about issues, and I believe deeply that we accomplished something." She was so inspired, in fact, that she and two other Congresswomen are sponsoring legislation for a follow-up national conference on women to be held next year in the U.S.-a feminist firecracker of sorts...
Jailing Mihajlov might also be a sop to the Soviets, whose attitude toward Yugoslavia will be extremely important in the post-Tito era (TIME, Oct. 21). For a decade, Mihajlov has been the Kremlin's least favorite Yugoslav. His 1965 travelogue, Moscow Summer, was scathingly critical of the Soviet police state. Kremlin leaders were so angered by it that they pressured Belgrade to prosecute Mihajlov for "defaming a friendly power." Since then he has been tried three times and has served 3½ years in prison. This did not dissuade him, however, from warning in his recent articles that...