Word: villainous
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...Nixon, who has been pronounced politically dead so many times before, be able to rehabilitate himself in the American imagination? Is there sufficient rightward veer in American politics these days to coax along a bit of revisionism about Watergate? If Nixon has by now exhausted the role of American villain, the political Grendel who tape-recorded himself snarling under the bridge, then what role might he still play, if any? An eventual party emeritus, perhaps, grudgingly respected and sought out for his savvy in foreign policy...
...fair because Nixon was meant to be the villain. If ever there were a symbol of self-seeking irresponsibility, of dispassionate recklessness, of calculated indifference at a time of national trauma, it was Richard Nixon. To ignore that legacy, to forget the five year's agony that was his reign, to embrace the new Nixon simply because he seems so humble and harmless, is to remove the great glaring scar that reminds America of how badly it can be burnt. We can forgive, but we cannot forget; if we do, there are platoons of Nixons, nervous upper lips sweating...
...back into recession. More signs of gathering trouble on the price front arrived with last week's reports. The cost of living jumped another .9% in May, which was as bad as the April rise and translates into an annual inflation rate of 11.4%. Once again, the chief villain was the rising cost of food, although meat prices, the top offender in the past, seem to be receding...
Castro singled out Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as the villain in the Administration who prevailed on the President to "perpetrate this absolute lie" about the Cuban involvement. Gesturing with one of his long Cohiba cigars, Castro said: "We have never lied, either to our friends or to our enemies. We may keep some things private, and we may be discreet, but we have never used lies as an instrument of politics...
Simon's harsh, free enterprise medicine is easy to take because it is spiced with considerable wit, especially at the expense of dissembling politicians. During New York City's 1975 fiscal crisis, he was cast as the villain because he would not offer a federal bailout. In private, some New York politicians told him to continue to hang tough for the good of the city; when he asked for their public support, they recoiled in horror. Yet conservatives were frequently no better, writes Simon. "As is so often the case in our society, when the liberals orchestrate...