Word: humbug
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Rajiv's greatest liability -- the fact that he was not by nature a politician -- was also his virtue. "Those who talked to Rajiv Gandhi noted the absence of humbug that is so typical of our political leaders," wrote Datta-Ray. Yet many thoughtful Indians and foreign leaders are not at all ready to write off the world's largest democracy. "Indian democracy has weathered such blows before and can do so again," said a senior British diplomat. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to New Delhi during the Kennedy Administration, called the system "imperfect but secure." Said Galbraith: "The idea...
...Representative and chief negotiator, Carla Hills. She is seen in Europe as tough and competent but not much given to grandstanding or gladiatorial gestures. That is a good combination because Europeans bridle at the occasional American tendency to clothe naked commercial interest in the language of moral philosophy -- "sanctimonious humbug," as a former British Trade Minister calls...
...Humbug, responds Dr. Meaden. "Those who like to fantasize that something from outer space is responsible can be excluded," he insists. "What does cause these circles is better than fiction." But with or without government research funding, it may be a while before students of the phantasmagoria come up with a totally convincing explanation. Indeed, some suspect that researchers and the locals may enjoy their novel oddity so much that another ring is more interesting than a conclusive answer...
...people, from the fiercely pretentious grandmother who wants everyone to forget she used to keep pigs to the nosy, noisy maid whose fractured syntax includes the news that an acquaintance is a patient at "Mount Cyanide." In Santeiro's shrewdest insight, the villain is not a religious humbug but a larcenous Lothario masquerading as an embodiment of the work ethic, and the cant he peddles is based on an immigrant assimilationist version of the American Dream...
...glimpse of the Tucker Torpedo at an auto show in the late '40s. It is rather that he too is a merchant of slightly skewed dreams, a tilter at his industry's conventional wisdom and a man who is himself a typical American genius, half visionary, half humbug...