Word: venality
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano's North Carolina State, Peter Golenbock makes a forceful case for the latter, the portrait of a venal, vicious and vainglorious Coach...
...unselfconscious approach allowed his imagination and love of language free play. The supposedly ephemeral results of this process were, paradoxically, often memorable. Here is a 1946 description of his surroundings during a vacation in New Hampshire: "The pastures are stony, the mountains are leonine, the natives are taciturn and venal, the sunsets are red, and in the early evenings you can hear, from the shores of the lake, the brave and innocent voices of little children, singing some gibberish song about what a wonderful time they're having at Camp Wonk-a-tonk...
...question of what really made Ferdinand and Imelda tick. What drove them to accumulate billions they could never have spent in three lifetimes? What possessed her to buy those infamous closetsful of unworn shoes? Still, the author does persuade us that his subjects, Ferdinand in particular, were paradigmatically venal. Lyndon Johnson, no mean connoisseur of cads, may serve as final witness. After one encounter with the self- glorifying Marcos, L.B.J. called in Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy and warned, "If you ever bring that son of a bitch within 50 miles of me again, I'll have your...
...drink eight Pabst Blue Ribbons in 15 minutes. Part of th' reason is that th' characters are all so damn self-destructive. Curse is about a family whose members have what one of them describes as "poison" in th' blood. They're alcoholic, they're violent, they're venal, they're ornery...
...Eliot Ness and, worse, a guilty plea made for Al Capone by his attorney against the mobster's will. That is something that could not happen in any court still observing the fundamentals of the Constitution. In Speed-the-Plow Mamet makes the unastonishing revelation that movie moguls are venal and pandering. Perhaps he means to prick spectators' consciences by holding them responsible for the box-office triumph of trivia over moral concern...