Word: undercutting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Reagan did not discuss possible staff changes when he spoke to businesswomen in the White House. Instead, he said he hoped the furor would not undercut support for the Contra forces fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...
...antitank missiles and 235 "battery assemblies" for Hawk antiaircraft missiles from the U.S.; he later put the price at $12 million. The number of TOWs would be double the figure cited by a reporter at Reagan's news conference and not corrected by the President. The disclosure also undercut Reagan's contention that the weapons sent by the U.S. were purely defensive; contrary to the President's press-conference assertions, the antitank missiles are too large to be fired from the shoulder and can obviously be used in an offensive campaign...
Hojatoleslam Seyed Ali Khamene'i, 47. Now serving his second term as President of Iran, Khamene'i is one of the regime's hard-liners. He has tried to undercut Rafsanjani, so far without success. Khamene'i is a strong proponent of exporting the Islamic revolution and a passionate enforcer of Islamic codes. At a January meeting of nonaligned states in Harare, Zimbabwe, he refused to shake hands with female officials from that African nation because Islamic practice requires strict separation of the sexes...
...justifying the Ad Board's decision, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 undercut his own view of the council as just one of many extracurricular activities on campus. He claimed that it would be "unbecoming" for the prankster to serve as a student leader on the council. But decorum is hardly a reason to invade the relationship between students and their elected representatives. Its use here as justification is a symptom of the administration's narrow vision of the purpose of student government. The Undergraduate Council's own past conduct may be partly to blame for that narrow...
Finally, for the pressured reader in search of humor, A Summons to Memphis provides it. The comedy is situational, two spinster sisters preventing their octagenerian father from remarrying; descriptive, this same eccentric duo frequenting nightclubs, dressed in sequined, clingy, front-and-back plunging fashions; and double-edged, undercut by a gently cynical realism. The comic sensibility is particular to Taylor's novel, but the truths revealed are universal...