European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 19, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 18 Colum fun the stars and stripes monday october 19,1987 a fatally flawed piece of work by William 5afire in veil his Book about William i Casey s Cia Bob Woodward climbs ins tit the head of Bobby Ray Inman who had been our Deputy chief spook and was apparently a key source for the newsman. After year writes Woodward Inman had come to regard Casey As a piece of work a term that Casey often applied to the oddballs in Irir although i never sought to penetrate the dying Bill Casey s heavily guarded Hospital room i can attest to my old pal s frequent use of the term. He s a piece of wort the director of Central intelligence would murmur referring to 3 tempestuous Legal client or Kooky foreign Leader shaking his head in a mixture of wonderment and either disapproval or grudging admiration. The phrase As Casey used it had a built in Ambi Guity which ton not always been the Case. The tint citation in the Oxford English dictionary s supple ment is under Nusly. A Nasty piece or bit of work or goods the mystery writer Agatha Christie preferred Nasty bit of oods but the novelist Monck Lon la off in 192b described a villain As really a rather Nasty piece of work even without the qualifying Nasty the British term piece of work Long had a pejorative connotation. In a 1965 collection of Short stories Abioseh Nicol had a character think what an obstinate and unpleasant piece of work the fellow this negative sense followed inc phrase to the United states in an inter change Between famous novelist in 1973, after Core Vida dismissed Norman Mailer with he read nothing at All he s never read me Mailer shot Back he s really such a corrupt and unpleasant piece of work when you get to know was i always thus the phrase firs appeared in circa 1540 interlude written by the dramatist John Haywood Here is an Eye tooth of the great Turk. Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work May happily lose pan of his in that Content the phrase seems to convey Admira Tion but a half Century later a new meaning of hard task difficult business was Given the phrase in the author and translator Richard Carew s it were an infinite peace of this meaning of strained Effort gained a figurative Extension of ado commotion in Charles Dickens novel Martin Chu Tewil what arc you making All this piece of work for along the Way Between the Early coinage of piece of work to denote an intricate Job and its later adoption apparently throughout our intelligence agencies a applicable to assets or targets who Are oddball eccentric weird the phrase was immortalized by William Shakespeare s Hamlet what a piece of work is a Man How Noble unreason How infinite in faculties How like an Angel in apprehension How like a god he was not suggesting Man is some kind of Prince Hamlet himself a Man tortured by doubt driven by dreams trusting nobody burdened by his bloody secrets half crazily pretending to be demented. There was a piece of work. Off the flaw i regret More deeply than i can express stated presidential candidate Alexander m. Haig jr., that the current proposed arms control agreement is seriously i give at credit for thai he avoided the most crashing cliche of treaty Tiship that ringing Triumph of alliteration fatally flawed he went on la say i cannot support the proposed agreement How Ever much thai May be the politically popular thing to where did i hear thai before fatally hawed was Ronald Reagan s characterization of the Salt ii treaty negotiated by the Carter administration because he said it would not bring about reductions in Large soviet land based phrase worked Well for him in 1987, he told an interviewer that the plan put Forward by Costa Rica s president Oscar Arias Sanchez in Guatemala was fatally flawed. The new York times in rebuttal editorialized the Guatemala plan whatever its weak Nesses is not fatally the editorialist knew that in the game of treaty flaws to be seriously flawed h to mean look this in t so hot but with a few big fixes 1 could live with in but to be fatally flawed is to mean this is one i want to run against mopping the flaws with fatality has resulted in a waxy build up of Bromide. He said my resume was fatally flawed wrote a Job Hunter in Dun s review in 1975, because i failed to Tell a prospective employer what 1 could do for in 1983, . Ambassador to Enesco Jean Gerard said that the organization was so skewed so far off course to fatally flawed Bat the United Stales had to gel out. Indiana sen. Richard g. Lugar observing a fraudulent election in the Philippines in 1986, refused to accept its legitimacy because the balloting was flawed in the Way we have Alt come to know and love. Nor is the phrase limited to political rightie a spokesman for the Union of concerned scientists called Reagan s Sta wars proposal too costly to put up and Loo exp Stuive to shoot Down therefore fatally flawed.1 first use Merriam Webster has a 1916 citation from sir Arthur quillor Couch s on the an of writ ing in which the famed stylist criticizes a work for Fie one fatal flaw that in imports emotion into a theme which does not properly admit of lexicographer Fred Mish thinks the phrase goes Back much further normally the noun phrase would be constructed first faulty flawed would come out of fatal flaw and my guess is that fatal flaw is much older than 1916." lexicographic irregulars who want to lop the oed and Merriam Webster have their work Cut out for them a cliche dating to Idon t know when. Ii could be that fatal flaw it rooted in tragic jaw. 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