Word: venal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...point of view, being mostly about money and therefore--considering all the ambient death and suffering--weirdly beside the point. It is a little difficult, despite Orey's exertions on behalf of the antitobacco lawyers, to find heroes in the drama. Riches are redistributed from one class of the venal to another. Mississippi's Medicaid legal team is awarded fees of $1.43 billion. Dick Scruggs, a leader of the team, buys himself a bigger private plane and a $200,000 Bentley; he trades in his 61-ft. motor yacht for one 30 ft. longer. Justice triumphs...
...talk-show host). But today's fans, who can spout weekend box-office grosses like football scores, fancy themselves insiders, fascinated with and cynical about media. Action, says Thompson, will appeal by "confirming America's worst fears that people in show business are the crass and venal destroyers of the culture and consumed by self-interest...
...other hand, what happened at Woodstock '99 (arson, pillaging, freelance mayhem) was much in the spirit of the music and of the occasion itself, which, for all the tie-dyed shirts, peace signs, long hair and dope, was only a venal shadow of an irrecoverable ghost...
...great threats to civilization in the second half of this century: nuclear war and communist dictatorship. In the dark, bitter depths of the cold war, Sakharov's voice rang out. "A miracle occurred," Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, "when Andrei Sakharov emerged in the Soviet state, among the swarms of corrupt, venal, unprincipled intelligentsia." By the time of his death in 1989, this humble physicist had influenced the spread of democratic ideals throughout the communist world. His moral challenge to tyranny, his faith in the individual and the power of reason, his courage in the face of denunciation and, finally, house arrest...
...country with no government and no plan for recovery. The massive dislocations in country after country lay in the mismanagement or malfeasance of top political and business figures, and the difficulty the world is having in repairing the damage owes much to a set of leaders who are weak, venal or tarnished...