Word: venal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...individuals being fingered in the press are ranking government and party officials. Reports TIME Peking Bureau Chief Richard Bernstein: "The fact that they are now being publicly denounced on the country's front pages indicates that the top leadership in Peking is stepping up its campaign against venal and corrupt practices within its own ranks, a problem that has long been a major source of cynicism and unhappiness among China's ordinary people...
...much as a single irony up its workshirt sleeve. They both tell the story of a good ole boy leading his small-top troupe from one tank town to another, juggling dreams of success and threats of eviction, extortion and worse. Add a couple of good buddies, a venal politician or two-and, most important, a little love interest to salt the stew-and the result is a movie that looks to be right out of Hollywood's golden age, but which seems curiously old-fashioned today. Catch either of these movies at a drive...
...landscape in this play is a tiny Russian village in the year 1905, where civilization is, at best, a rumor. Gorky populates the canvas of his drama with wife beaters, sodden vodkaholics, corrupt bureaucrats, venal merchants, sanctimonious hypocrites, neurotically damaged children and disaffected wives who have been churlishly and brutally scorned...
...Terming her critique "wise-guy," "sadistic," "prejudiced" and "misleading," the owners threatened: "We intend to hold you accountable for your cruelty, your malevolence and your viciousness." The Lums also claimed that Sheraton had only visited their restaurant once, not several times, as she had reported, and called her verdict "venal." Both assertions were ordered deleted by the Times's "continuity director"-i.e., advertising censor-and the Lums complied. As for holding the paper and its critic accountable, the Lums talked of filing a $2 million libel suit...
...singing with the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. Grey starred in the first American production of Silverlake, an allegorical opera with music by Kurt Weill, originally produced in Germany in 1933, the place and period of Grey's enormously successful Cabaret. Silverlake's theme, the venal rich vs. the virtuous poor, was so politically powerful in 1933 that Nazi storm troopers broke up performances. New York critics were not that harsh, but some deemed the libretto dated and the music not worth Weill. Still, uptown was heady for Grey. In lieu of Broadway's traditional...