Word: venal
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...Venal Men. Thus Carlos Fuentes, an able and eloquent novelist, though not a subtle one, passionately expounds the dominant Marxist line: the failure of the Mexican Revolution to produce a socialist Utopia must be laid to venal men who betrayed it to capitalist thieves and their attendant priests and police...
...down the rebellion that Laertes leads to the palace and lectures him like a boy, and the depth of Ophelia's passion at her father's death shows up his foolishness. He stabs Hamlet not as a desperate act on the part of an honorable man, but as the venal act of a fool. The textual validity of the interpretation is somewhat questionable; Hamlet, after all, thinks of Laertes as a "very noble youth." Callum, however, makes a consistent and plausible character...
...dialogue as it occurred. In my presentation, I quoted Alex Comfort's two commandments; "Do not exploit another's feelings, and do not cause an unwanted birth," I cautioned, however, that often middle-class people put off having children, or even compel abortions, for the most trivial or venal reasons, or mere convenience; they out themselves off from big experience. Dr. Blaine then chose as his principle theme the "tragedy" of the unwed pregnant girl. A student then protested that if Dr. Blaine thought that this was such an ultimate evil, why didn't the University clinic provide contraceptives...
Hachette has exerted no depressing influence on the quality of the French press, which has detectably improved since the venal prewar period when the news columns of nearly any paper could be bought. It has been argued that Hachette's omnipresence discourages the rise of new papers. But it is not easy to pin the blame on Hachette. While it is true that newspaper circulation has declined since the war-by 2,000,000 in Paris and a like amount in the provinces-there are many contributing reasons: TV, the new emphasis on leisure pursuits, and even Charles...
Aspire or Expire. Off-Broadway is usually judged by its best efforts, while Broadway is often cavalierly measured by its worst. The present crisis of off-Broadway is that its best efforts are becoming rarer and rarer, and it is being swamped by its typical products, which are increasingly venal, sloppy, and predictable. For every promising Playwright Schisgal, there are a dozen silly spoofs of old movie musicals, or tasteless tours through neurotic junkyards of the mind, or criminal displays of self-ordained talent that might have lasted ten seconds before getting the critical gong on the late Major Bowes...