Word: blameless
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bombing; many must have been military personnel, for antiaircraft batteries were a primary objective. I received incredibly bitter letters from erstwhile friends, from angry citizens. (None of them wrote me in January when the agreement was reached.) It seemed to be taken for granted that North Viet Nam was blameless and that we were embarked on a course of exterminating civilians...
...taken the tranquilizer thalidomide, the tragedy underscored a brutal fact of life: would-be mothers exposed to drugs during pregnancy can endanger the health of their offspring. Indeed, doctors have long assumed that the mother alone is responsible for chemically induced birth defects. The father was considered blameless. At worst, a male's lifestyle-whether he took drugs, for example, or smoked or drank-might affect his own health but not that of his child. Now some doctors are beginning to suspect that dad's habits may be as damaging to the unborn child...
...Unlike Novelist Theroux, Bogdanovich does not have a particularly keen descriptive eye; he goes for tourist snapshots instead of true grit. Except for Denholm Elliott, who offers a fastidious portrait of a typically down-and-out British colonial, the actors do little to help the proceedings. Gazzara is fairly blameless, given his flat role, but the miscasting of his con-man nemesis is a disaster. Had a strong actor played the villain, who recalls Harry Lime in The Third Man, Saint Jack might have had some tension and dramatic heft. Instead, the director has placed himself in the role...
This is not to say the faculty is blameless. The faculty union should have shown more restraint during the negotiations. In particular, the union should have delayed the strike until it was absolutely certain that the trustees' objections to the contract were unresolvable. Still, it is understandable if the faculty at times overreacted--members had been trampled upon so frequently they felt it necessary to assert themselves...
...proved as great a scourge of biographers as he was of political opponents. The difficulties seem insoluble: the man has to be separated from the history that made him and the history that he made. Marx also has to be removed from the True Believers, who find him blameless, and the Great Haters, who see him with horns and a tail...