Word: wises
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...upcoming book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia (New American Library; $18.95), written with Richard Woodley, reveals the full extent of his dangerous voyage into the underworld. Pistone lived with mobsters, gained their trust and came close to being initiated as a wise guy -- a "made" Mafioso. He helped arrange business deals between crime families in different parts of the country and was the subject of three Mob-style tribunals, or "sit-downs," any of which could have resulted in a contract on his life. "In the Mafia, it's always someone you know real well who kills...
Pistone shows the Mafia as holding a disregard for human life that is terrifyingly amoral. As a wise guy, Pistone quotes Lefty as saying, "you can cheat, you can steal, you can kill people -- legitimately. You can do anything you want, and nobody can say anything about...
...Chicago policemen as big as beer trucks thundering through tear-gas- poisoned air and clubbing with nightsticks. The answering, taunting obscenities and rage, and after that the McLuhan-wise chorus from those being clubbed: "The whole world is watching!" Then, through the death stench of the Chicago stockyards, inside the Democratic Convention, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff on the podium denouncing the "gestapo tactics" of the police, and down on the floor, in the Illinois delegation, Mayor Richard Daley, face contorted, screaming at Ribicoff. TV's nation of lip-readers & thought they saw Daley emit the words...
This sense of Ethiopia as a bottomless sinkhole for Western aid inspires some skeptical experts to wonder whether such assistance is really wise. Regular international rescue efforts do little to encourage recipients to learn to feed themselves, the skeptics argue, and a tougher approach just might force Ethiopia to mend its ways. "What will aid do?" asked Britain's Economist last month. "It will strengthen the dominion of Ethiopia's ignorant rulers. The weather is the only calamity not directly caused by Colonel Mengistu . . . and his cronies. Their Russian advisers have taught them to run vast state farms that produce...
...fondly. The accomplished performers who wrote the show and some of the musical selections -- Mark Hardwick and Debra Monk (who collaborated previously on the 1981 off-Broadway hit Pump Boys and Dinettes), Mary Murfitt and Mike Craver -- are all Middle Americans by upbringing, not New York City wise guys. They've been there. When Debbie sings an ode to shopping malls and interstates called Ohio Afternoon ("Ohio fun . . . diesels dragging out on Highway 1"), she gets all misty. When Mark and Mike have at a couple of Zez Confrey ivory ticklers like Dizzy Fingers and Coaxing the Piano, their doofus...