Word: venal
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represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Out Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us: the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close...
...enemies-there is an ample supply-dismiss her as vulgar, venal, vindictive and untrustworthy, a puffball of bluff. Even some friends regard her with the affectionate respect that they might accord a pet barracuda. "The first time she asked me to a party," remembers Client Dyan Cannon, "she said, 'Will you wash your face before you come? I want people to see what you look like.' I was intimidated by her dictating, pontifical ways at first, but now I just don't let her be my mother." Her fans find her clever, charming when she tries...
...hand side-until, at last, they forget why they came in. For Christmas and the New Year, then, let this be their gift: to lose their jaded tastes, their ennui with ordinary extravagance and to gain an appetite for value as well as price. If they must commit the venal sin of self-indulgence, let them learn to do it in style...
...Then how could we present these men as being so venal and stupid...
...That may be a valid criticism. Look, you say "in the context of easy ironies that the film presents, in which all men are power-hungry or venal on a solely personal level," ...in a sense, all political people are on a personal level, but I think we show relatively idealistic people in this film...