Word: underworlders
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...explanations in Welles' orotund delivery become bemusingly classical: "The biggest dice game in history was for some very high stakes indeed. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades rolled for the universe. Poseidon won the oceans, Hades the underworld and Zeus the heavens. It is thought that Zeus owned the dice...
DIED. Joel Sayre, 78, maverick reporter and screenwriter; of a heart attack; in Taftsville, Vt. At 16, Sayre left college to join the Canadian army for World War I service in Siberia. After graduating from Oxford, he covered Gangster "Legs" Diamond and the underworld for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1933 he published Rackety Rax, an uproarious satire about football and the Mob, and followed it to Hollywood, where it became a film and he became a scriptwriter on such classics as Gunga Din and Annie Oakley...
Among citizens of major industrial nations, Americans have long been among the most honor bright in paying their taxes. But hammering inflation and high levies have weakened their sense of morality. More and more, otherwise honest Americans are following the lead of underworld elements and dodging their tax obligations by exchanging goods and services for under-the-table payments of cash and barter...
Diaghilev's private life was as notorious as his public spectacles. He was a celebrated figure in the Paris underworld; Nijinsky was one of his lovers. "It is almost impossible," said Stravinsky, "to describe the perversity of Diaghilev's entourage-a kind of homosexual Swiss Guard." He reminded one musician of a "decadent Roman emperor-possibly Genghis Khan or even a barbarous Scythian-and lastly, what he really was: a Russian grand seigneur...
...surge of the underground economy reflects a troubling shift in American attitudes. So many people are fed up with inflation and high taxes that they no longer feel morally obligated to obey tax laws. Reports TIME Correspondent John Tompkins, who has covered organized crime for many years: "The underworld and the upperworld have converged in their morality over the past several decades. The underworld has not moved over to us, but we have moved in its direction." The victims, of course, are the honest taxpayers, who will have to fork over more and more to carry the load...