Word: tactlessly
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Shrewd was scarcely the word for Adams when he arrived in Paris early in 1780 to take up his duties as U.S. peace commissioner. He was green, scared, pompous, moralistic and tactless. Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, who intended to be "master of the peace," gave a sharp tug on the purse strings and "persuaded" the Continental Congress to divide its peacemaking powers among five commissioners.* A little later he also forced Congress to instruct its commissioners "to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace without the knowledge and concurrence of the ministers of France." To make sure these incapacitating...
Despite its tactless tardiness, the CAB had some good reasons for turning down the fare hike. Last year 2,300,000 passengers flew across the Atlantic-but, on the average, the big jets were only 45% full. Mostly mired in huge deficits, the European airlines see higher fares as the most expedient way out of their financial difficulties. Pan Am and TWA have been making good profits on the North Atlantic run, though steadily losing a bigger share of the market to foreign carriers. They argue that lower fares are needed to attract more passengers to Europe and help...
...scripts and intelligent directors. In her most distinguished films-notably, The Old Maid, The Letter, The Little Foxes, All About Eve-she played grueling, unsympathetic parts that most other actresses would shun. Today, living in California and Maine, Mother Goddam admits that she has been "uncompromising, peppery, untractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and ofttimes disagreeable." In a line that only Bette Davis could deliver, on or off screen, she concludes: "I suppose I'm larger than life...
...1930s, Kreisler astonished the musical world-and embarrassed critics-by confessing that for years he had been palming off a whole series of his own compositions as the works of such classical composers as Vivaldi, Martini, Couperin, Dittersdorf, Pugnani. Explained Kreisler: "I found it inexpedient and tactless to repeat my name endlessly in the programs...
...Kennedy urged that every official in the Cabinet Room get a copy of the speech and study it. If some had already grasped Khrush's message, perhaps sooner than the President himself (who in early 1961 entertained some hopes of an accommodation with the U.S.S.R.), there was nobody tactless enough to bring that...