Word: venal
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...poem also treats the bitter matter of choice as the source of tragedy. The hero lived for honor, which had a social and a metaphysical nature. The social was reputation, the praise of other soldiers; the metaphysical was self-esteem, a search conducted amidst darkness for some less venal vindication of a man's being. Tragedy results from the impossibility of living reputably while searching divinely. For the Greeks this was essentially a conflict of religion, in which the waters of the physical world streamed into the recesses of mental yearning. Achilles believed that only the gods' honor matters, that...
...including his troublemaking dropout brother, two deaf-mutes and his aunt and uncle, who are welfare applicants. In the beginning, he attends night law school and tries to make it within the structure. He becomes increasingly militant as he encounters usurious used-car dealers, unscrupulous real estate men and venal cops down at precinct headquarters. The whites, however, come off as no more villainous than the black middle class, especially Jonah's mother-in-law and his rival, an Uncle-Tom sergeant named Vines...
...good? With similar unsophistication, he argues that only whites hurt blacks. Presumably, after almost 21 years of the Nigerian civil war, even his eyes should be a little wider open than that. One insufferable assumption of the play is that anything the U.S. does in the world is unvaryingly venal. Now to err is human, and since Americans are human, they err. But to imply that all their motives in world affairs are malignant, avaricious and murderous is surely to show a strong and unrealistic bias...
...widespread gambling in the county, Special Prosecutor Nelson Stamler launched a probe that resulted in indictments against 77 people, including two police chiefs. To nobody's surprise, Stamler soon was replaced. One reason the reform efforts failed may well be that local political bosses, many of them thoroughly venal, enjoy virtual veto power over the appointment of county judges and prosecutors...
...neon-lit, freon-cooled sand castles of The Strip rise amid the cacti and creosote bushes, massive monuments to hedonism. Inside their carpeted, clockless confines, nothing seems real: time stands still, and $100 is just a black gambling chip. This Las Vegas is a jet-age Sodom, a venal demimonde in which the greatest compliment that can be paid a man is to say that he has "juice" (influence in the right places). The city is the ultimate affront to taste...