dry as dust

For years, Cheney was a hero to the Republican right for his forthright manner and dry-as-dust ideological beliefs - and reviled by the left, who accused him of working for the interests of the oil industry.

Yesterday, the decision emerged in a dry-as-dust news release at the dog end of the political day.

Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.

As Bernard Baruch points out in his introduction, “This is no dry-as-dust study. It deals with the raw stuff of living, how more than two billion men and women, including you and me, are to be fed, sheltered, and clothed — and whether or not we will live in peace tomorrow, and next year, and in the year 1975.”

Even that old windbag Polonius, played by Robert Joy, is less a bombastic grandstander than a dry-as-dust martinet.