Word: waspish
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...proposed reform is not to create a U.S.-model presidency, but to put the French presidency above the chaos of party politics. Says De Gaulle: "The President must never be the leader of a parliamentary majority." - Also in the cards is a Cabinet shuffle. Major anticipated casualty is waspish little Premier Michel Debre. Cool to NATO and (until called upon to implement De Gaulle's policy) against Algerian independence. Debre has been the lightning rod of the Gaullist regime, attracting resentment that might otherwise have been showered on De Gaulle. Into the Foreign Ministry replacing Maurice Couve de Murville...
Nose Count. Meanwhile India's waspish diplomatic swami, V.K. Krishna Menon, casting himself in the role of the great mediator, told everyone that neither the troika nor the temporary Secretary-General would work. He had no plan of his own, simply kept urging compromise. "You value this organization, don't you?" he would ask unaligned delegates. "Then you'd better get the U.S. and its allies to compromise, to meet the Russians halfway...
...these two short novels, La Garibaldina, chronicles a picaresque encounter on a Sicilian train after World War I between a simple, hearty young soldier, joyous at the prospect of a three-day leave home, and a lusty, waspish old baroness who is full of guile and as phony as her title. She is nicknamed La Garibaldina, because she used to be a camp follower in Italy's redshirt army of liberation in the 1860s, a career she has elaborated into her own self-nourishing legend that she was the schoolgirl who inspired Garibaldi's march on Rome. Phony...
...critic's chair is more often remembered for being bright than right, waspish than wise. Playwright Jean Kerr recently recalled that she rankled for ten years over a barbed line in a Kronenberger review of her first play, Jenny Kissed Me: "Leo G. Carroll brightens up Mrs. Kerr's play in much the same way that flowers brighten a sickroom." Then there was the hapless actor who was commended for "playing his role up to the hilt except that he had no sword." Wit can be instant wisdom. Kronenberger's first clever words on a playwright have...
...nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have an august, impersonal presence. But beneath those black robes beat the human hearts of men with very human worries, frustrations-and tempers. Chief Justice Earl Warren has a notably thin skin, and waspish Justice Felix Frankfurter can get under an elephant's hide. Last week the two tiffed on the bench...