Word: offhand
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Even if the U.S. is quietly dickering with the Communists, its bellicose pronouncements in Washington, in Korea, and in Lake Success will do little to improve its bargaining position and have already caused considerable damage. President Truman's offhand comment on the atomic bomb put our European allies in a terrible fright, while MacArthur's communiques have compromised Western unity. It will take us a while yet to develop our "big stick"; the least we can do in the meantime is to walk more softly...
Rupert Emerson, chairman of the Department of Government, said, "My offhand sentiment would be that I regret to see individual tutorial cut down to five percent of the students in Government." He added that he considered individual tutorial far more satisfactory than group work...
Analyzing the transcripts, Editor Gilbert finds that Hitler "left hardly any freedom to his field commanders" and that his "first reaction to any suggestion of a withdrawal was invariably to suspect that it was motivated by lack of courage, and that his most usual attitude . . was to reject [it] offhand." But his generals' postwar charge that he "acted entirely by intuition . . . was inaccessible to rational considerations and did not brook contradiction ... is [not] borne out by these documents...
...contemporaries, Guardi in Italy, Fragonard in France and Gainsborough in England, all devoted 'themselves to the depiction of pomp and pleasure. Goya did, too, but he painted pompous fools and smirking harlots. He was as harsh and realistic a portraitist as ever lived (and sometimes a surprisingly offhand one), but that did not prevent him from becoming Madrid's court painter. Goya's paintings of the royal family were much admired, for no one dared admit that he showed them naked as the emperor in the fable of the "Emperor's New Clothes," stripped down...
...possibly because Mrs. Roosevelt's radio show and her TV show (Sun. 3:30 p.m., NBCTV) are the only ones he has on the air, Impresario Elliott serves in many other capacities. He often rounds up talent for the radio program, his determined salesman's geniality in offhand invitations such as the one he gave Fred Allen: "Come on over and have some fun with mother." He supervises the recording of interviews ("Hold it, Mother, there'll be a teaser first"), and he writes and personally delivers the commercials for such sponsors as McKettrick Williams dresses; Sitroux...