Word: thugs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Begin with Al Capone, from whom all factual and fictional descendants have learned some of the elements of style. But skip all that gangster-as-tragic- hero stuff. In Robert De Niro's grandly scaled performance he is demonically expansive, our first thug celebrity. And a man who in his secret life, the life his romanticizing fans did not want to hear about, illustrates a lecture on teamwork by taking a Ruthian clout at a traitorous underling's skull with a baseball bat. What he evokes, finally, is pure horror (and maybe some black humor) but -- and the film...
Both have to deal with recalcitrant offspring. Bert's son Victor (Ross Bickell) is a policeman who, since the death of his brother, has been trying to convince everyone who cares about him that he's a "non-thinking fascist thug...
...what of international morality? Even if it is strategically important for the U.S. to prevent a Communist state in Central America, do not American values prevent us from overthrowing another government? In principle, no. It depends on the case. The 1983 overthrow of the thug government of Grenada, for example, surely qualified as one of the more moral exercises of American foreign policy...
George lives in a world where time is meaningless and it's possible to go months without being touched by anyone but a thug. Lack of sleep, food or conversation breeds confusion and depression. He feels himself slipping but struggles to remember what he once had and to figure out how to get it back. He rarely drinks alcohol and keeps his light brown corduroy pants and red- checked shirt meticulously clean. Underneath, he wears two other shirts to fight off the cold, and he sleeps with his large hands buried deep within his coat pockets amid old sandwiches...
...really up to the task. In a profile of a well- known woman who insists that she has lived several times before, one journalese speaker came up with this deft line: "More than most people on this earth, she has found spiritual answers." In crime journalese, the top thug in any urban area is always referred to as a "reputed Mafia chieftain" and generally depicted as an untutored but charismatic leader of a successful business operation. The chieftain's apprentice thugs are his "associates." This sort of coverage reflects the automatic respect and dignity accorded crime figures who know where...