Word: venality
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...would be hard to do worse than his father did. When the one-time Marxist Laurent-Désiré - backed by Rwanda and Uganda - ousted the venal Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, he was greeted with cheers and optimism. After three decades of kleptocratic dictatorship, it seemed that Congo could finally begin again. But the senior Kabila's promise of national reconstruction didn't get much further than slogans and billboards. Within a year the country was back at war, and the smiling giant had cracked down on political opponents and postponed promised elections. So when a bodyguard shot...
...Oscar show was more pleasant than usual, thanks to Steve Martin, who managed to take some of the usual flash and venal smirk off the evening. Maybe everyone was worried sober by the market. The proceedings and most of the clothes were even unexpectedly dignified. The cameramen, who must have worked for Ed Sullivan in the days of Elvis, were forbidden to show Jennifer Lopez below the collarbone. Stephen Soderbergh, Best Director (for "Traffic") gave a feeling and self-effacing speech about creativity ("the world would be intolerable without art"). Bob Dylan materialized from Australia, geezer indeed, with a fascinatingly...
...suggestions that a bribe was involved. Their portrayal of a White House in disarray--the Final Daze--sounded so plausible that some thought it explained why Clinton waived his Executive privilege and allowed his counselors to testify. This is what passes as the best defense--not that he was venal but that he was an idiot. "I think that people are finally tiring of it," Podesta told Time, "but as long as it's still selling cable-TV rating points, it will probably go on a little longer...
...adapted by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, fiddles more with its source and reworks--improves upon--that novel's ending. Director Ridley Scott is nicely attuned to Harris' depiction of evil, of the strength and seduction in depravity. Each gargoyle gets his due: greedy detective Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini), the venal official Krendler (Ray Liotta). Even Mason Verger, the pedophile with the skinless face (Gary Oldman, under a layer of Toussaud wax), brings wit to his lurid vengefulness. All the actors do expert turns. And Moore makes a fine, severe Clarice. As Lecter consumes his victims, so Clarice assumes their pain...
...they would venture near the place. Eighth-grade textbooks omit mention of Buddhism, emphasizing instead that before China's army "peacefully liberated" the province, "it practiced the darkest, most barbaric system of slavery in human history." Films like the 1963 Serfs, seen in childhood by nearly all Chinese, show venal monks digging out people's eyeballs to settle debts and stretching the skin of dead serfs over drum heads. Communist propaganda vilifies exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as a "splittist" seeking to restore feudalism. Such images die hard. Yang Bo, a 30-year-old Chinese tourist who absorbed many...