Word: underworldly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...curiously ritualistic and similar to one another. A celebrity wanders in the shadow world of Dysfunction: amid drugs or booze or binge eating. Or else in Denial of something, of incest, say, or child abuse, or another shameful secret. This is the Exemplary Ordeal. Celebrity Hits Bottom (descent into underworld). Then stumbles halfway up, to Betty Ford or some equivalent purgatorial rehab. At last, fallen angel reascends to the upper air, finds new life (often new mate as well, or else peace with the truth that, hey, it's O.K. to be alone). The rebirth is celebrated on the cover...
Surprise. Double Cross (Warner Books; 366 pages; $22.95), written by Giancana's brother Chuck and godson Sam, says that is exactly what happened. Chuck Giancana played the role of underworld Candide, charting his brother's rise as the most powerful Mob boss west of the Mississippi and taking note of his snuff work for the CIA. "It's beautiful," says Sam. "The Outfit even has the same enemies as the government...
...luck to be a gangster in New York City last week. As the jury forewoman chanted the verdict -- guilty of murder, guilty of racketeering, 13 counts in all -- godfather John Gotti could only sit with his thin-lipped smile frozen while the underworld came crashing down around him. In guarded talks, the Gambino family's second string scrambled to regroup, shuddering with the knowledge that turncoats were singing, the feds were listening and more indictments were...
...DIED BY HIS OWN HAND, OR WAS MADE TO LOOK AS though he had. Thirteen more are in prison, most in Remand Center No. 4 in the Moscow suburbs, which has been cleared of common criminals to house only the elite of the Russian underworld -- and the accused plotters of last August's coup. There they await trial on charges of high treason. If found guilty -- and several insist they were innocent dupes -- they could be imprisoned for 10 to 15 years, or put to death. But whatever their eventual fate, one thing is totally clear: the plotters have...
...KNOW anything about Magic Johnson, you'll have to take the word of everyone who does that he is an amazing person, a paragon of unselfishness, humility, hard work, optimism and public-mindedness totally anomalous in today's sordid underworld of professional sports. It is no coincidence that the hundreds of players, reporters and league officials who know him personally--not to mention the millions of inner-city teenagers, schoolteachers, police officers and corporate executives who don't--were devastated by his announcement...