Word: veneering
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...life is more complicated than she first lets on. She hides her work from her family and her best friend/ex-boyfriend Ben (Iddo Goldberg). She has vague literary ambitions and is aware that hers is a job without a long future. And despite the high-class, clean-and-safe veneer, she has to call her agency on each date with a code phrase--"No problemo"--to confirm her client isn't Jack the Ripper...
...sentient beings - so indignant over our indifference that they want to wipe us out and take over the world. Of course the notion is far-fetched, but the endosymbiotic theory of mitochondria, which posits that the organelles evolved from ancient bacteria, provides Sena's gruesome fantasy with a veneer of plausibility. Given the chance, he suggests, they might want to become their own organisms again and knock off their human hosts while they...
Such disdain for the democratic process raises a question: why bother with elections at all? Other African tyrannies have dispensed with the awkward trial of popular votes altogether, and ruled as unapologetic autocracies. So why the need for a veneer of respectability, however thin, in Zimbabwe? The answer lies in the psychology of Mugabe and his fellow liberation leaders, many of whom came from a background of elite academia. Mugabe himself has seven degrees, most of them earned during the 11 years he spent in prison when the country was called Rhodesia...
...Zanu-PF's contempt for democracy, paired with a simultaneous need for a veneer of respectability, is symptomatic of Mugabe's leadership style: dictatorial but self-righteous. Johannesburg-based Heidi Holland is one of the few journalists to have met Mugabe more than once. In her book, Dinner With Mugabe, she tries to explain the mystery of Mugabe's mind. "Like the seemingly respectable married man who makes his living as a drug lord, Mugabe holds parallel positions," she writes. "The two are not coordinated in his divided self. While he was indeed the enlightened leader who wanted to develop...
...takes the oath of office in January, he’ll drown U.S. businesses in regulations and they’ll be less competitive in the world economy. Sure, he’s inspiring. But our troubled economy can’t afford the left-wing policies beneath the veneer. Senator Obama claims to be a fresh face in the political arena, but rip away the glamour and the glitz, and you’ll find he’s nothing more than a big-government liberal. Brian J. Bolduc ‘10, a Crimson editorial editor...