Word: curley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Curley is justly proud of his cool, poised platform manner. He chaired meetings with a splendid mixture of dignity, trickery and bogus erudition. Once he presided over a Sunday evening meeting when an opposition member asked for an Australian (i.e., secret) ballot. Recalls Curley: "I pounded my gavel. 'The gentleman.' I said, 'is out of order. It may interest him to know that they don't vote on Sundays in Australia...
Proudest Boast. Curley's book is sprayed with political maxims (see box) which, however amoral, surest an expert deeply fascinated by a great art. He scarcely bothers to deny the charges of corruption that soiled virtually his whole career. For the "Goo-Goo" (good government) forces he has sublime contempt: "There were the pitiable, simpering halfwits who went about nudging people in the side, pouring the devil knows what poison in their ears, and the brethren of hamlet and village, who had never seen Curley, gazed upon his countenance on posters that portrayed a baleful-eyed monster glaring...
...Curley's proudest boast is that he was always a friend of the poor. The Christmas basket, the $10 loan, the stay of eviction, the city job-all bought him votes, but also made his headquarters a "school, employment agency, court of domestic relations and poor man's 'psychiatric couch.'" He was the voice of the poor, too, railing down the years against the Brahmins of Back Bay, State Street and Harvard. Curley's long memory bears the imprint of the Yankee sign, "No Irish Need Apply," that was so frequent in his youth. Though...
...Bury All. Curley's private life was scarred by tragedy. His first wife, Mary, died of cancer. Of his nine children, seven died, two of them on the same day from the same cause: cerebral hemorrhage. Today James Michael Curley is beyond the end of his political trail, the last of the city bosses who went down before a combination of social services, prosperity, a more hardheaded electorate. He was soundly beaten in his last three mayoralty bids (the most recent in 1955), and last December narrowly survived an operation for a stomach ulcer. His final ambition: attaining...
...LAST HURRAH, by Edwin O'Connor. A lusty, irreverent and affectionate fictional portrait of a shrewd gasbag who became a powerful political boss. The story stays on target so steadily that Boston's ex-Mayor Jim Curley still thinks he was having his picture taken...