Word: besmirches
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...only advice Pacquiao has ignored. His first love is boxing, but cockfighting and high-stakes gambling - preferably both at the same time - come a close second. Singson warns that gambling will drain Pacquiao's fortune and besmirch his populist image. "I told him, 'People look at you as their idol. It's bad if they see you gambling.' So now he's stopped [going to] casinos already." Really? Less than two days after his homecoming, the boxer could be spotted playing Texas Hold'em at a windowless poker joint in Manila in the small hours. Peering protectively through nearby...
...Church. Papal officials, however, defend Benedict's silence. "The Pope was not part of what happened back then, and he shouldn't be part of it now," says a Vatican insider. Indeed, the Vatican has mounted an aggressive campaign to portray the scandals as an attempt to besmirch the Pope and discredit the church as a whole. "Over recent days some people have sought, with considerable persistence ... [to] personally involve the Holy Father in questions of abuse," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a written commentary. Another senior official goes further. "They want to involve the Pope at all costs...
Many Indians are appalled not only that a descendant of Nehru is espousing such a political perspective but that his name and actions besmirch that of the great Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was assassinated by a Hindu extremist in 1948. While the Mahatma was not a blood relation of the Nehrus, a popular story has the philosopher of political non-violence, who was Indira's godfather, allowing her fiance, a young Zoroastrian lawyer originally called Feroze Shah Ghandy, to restyle his surname as Gandhi, thus attaching prestige to a mixed marriage many Hindus would not have approved of. Priyanka Gandhi...
...what of his opponent? John McCain is a charter Teddy Award winner, a former exemplar of free-range political candor. Not this year. He ran a dismal campaign that seems even smaller in retrospect. He spent almost all his energy trying to besmirch his opponent without offering a memorable new idea. Still, he deserves credit for two steps he didn't take: he did not play the race card by regurgitating the hateful sermons of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor; and he did not play the anti-immigrant card that might have appealed to frightened average Joes and assorted...
...When the Obama campaign attacks her, they certainly are trying to besmirch the Clintons’ (kind of) good name; such is the nature of bruising national politics. However, when we as unbiased political observers say that Geraldine Ferraro seems a hypocrite and a bigot in making these conspiratorial accusations about not one black politician, but all of them, we would appear to be justified by factual evidence. After all, these men confront the same sort of barrier to entry that she came upon two decades ago. One could argue that theirs is even higher...