Word: venal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Izzy got his job in the first place because he did not look like a detective. He kept it because he was neither venal nor lazy. When his fellow agents were reporting for work. Izzy would appear with a dozen prisoners. His industry, affability and ingenious disguises made and kept him headline news. Some of his makeups: Negro, Italian fruit-vendor, iceman, longshoreman, gasfitter, judge. Cornell undergraduate, streetcar conductor, carpenter, trombone-player (when demonstrating his ability he played ''How Dry I Am"). Once he was admitted to a speakeasy on the strength of being a Prohibition agent...
...criticism, sober and ribald, to which the venal trade of publicizing has been subjected seems to have been blunted on the dullness of its target. Or possibly the public has become so habituated to the nonsensical claims by manufacturers who keep safety-pins and piston rods fresh in cellophane, that claptrap and falsehood in advertising neither arouses suspicion as to the purity and worth of the product, nor awakens resentment in the minds of the duped. If this is so no hopes can be held for any immediate change. But if the flood of periodicals mocking the accepted lies...
...Duringer had been hiding under the bed. Pleased that the murder of the red-headed dancer had taken the city's attention from the murder of another red-headed girl-Benita Franklin Bischoff alias Vivian Gordon, vice racketeer, whose death on the eve of giving testimony against a venal officer is yet to be solved (TIME, March 9, et seq.)-Commissioner Mulrooney sneered at Crowley: "Sure he fought when he was cornered. But so does a cornered rat. . . . He never really shot it out with anyone...
...active disbeliever in capitalist economics, Steffens is skeptical of them; thinks not only that business controls government but that politicians are venal by profession. His journalism might be said to have been more revelatory than reformist. His (implicit) advice: find the facts, clear your soul of cant...
...Boss Curry of the Hall's present ticklish situation, for which there is an interesting parallel in the last great Tammany scandal. In 1912, the year before Boss Murphy had Governor Sulzer impeached, a gambler named Herman Rosenthal was killed on the eve of his giving damaging evidence against venal policemen. Within four months Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, "Lefty Louis" Rosenberg, "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz, "Whitey" Lewis and "Dago Frank" Ciro-fici were sentenced to death for the murder. The reaction to this affair gave the State a Reform Governor (Charles S. Whitman), the city a Reform Mayor (John Purroy...