Word: spuriousness
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...Bishop, Dictator François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier was "honest" and "intelligent." Commenting on last year's carefully supervised election, in which Papa Doc stood alone on the ballot, Bishop wrote: "The Haitians liked him so well that they elected him President for life. This was not a spurious, rigged election. He could call one tomorrow and win easily." Bishop was equally impressed by the dictator's secret police, the tonton macoute: They "comprise a personal force whose function is to keep President Duvalier acquainted with the true temper of the people...
...using the anonymous source for no apparent reason, are sometimes suspected of manufacturing the quote. But this kind of subterfuge is rarely necessary. Someone can usually be found to say what a reporter wants said. After that, the only purpose of anonymity is to give the quote a spurious air of authority...
...huge amounts of oil as collateral. But there was one hitch: he never had all that oil. What he did have was a mountain of paper-certificates attesting that he owned the oil. Although Billie Sol Estes at that very time was making headlines for having passed off similarly spurious paper for nonexistent ammonia tanks, the bankers and brokers never bothered to check up on De Angelis' tanks. Nor did they question De Angelis' warehouse receipts, because Tino had them signed by officials of American Express...
Twitches & Jumps. Only by the end, however, does the most fundamental doubt emerge. The Ambassador claims to be a variant of that novel of religious crisis that West has written before. But this time the claim is spurious. Though Maxwell Amberley twitches and jumps to plenty of religious alarums, the genuine spiritual conflicts never quite make it onto the stage. Instead, big worldly events distract the reader from his wholly justified suspicion that the business of the soul is being carried on in false coin...
...executioners. They resumed the reign of terror against Negroes. They tarred and feathered men and women-white and black-whom they suspected of illicit sexual relations, and lynched, mutilated or lashed hundreds of others. They tortured Jewish shopkeepers, whom they accused of massive international financial conspiracies; they published a spurious Knights of Columbus "oath" that portrayed Roman Catholics as villainous conspirators against the U.S. Their bedsheets became robes emblazoned with ornate embroidery, and they invented a whole new thesaurus of Klanonyms. There were the Kleagle and the Klabee, the Kladd and the Klaliff, the Klectoken and the Klexter, the Klig...