With America obsessed with its disputed presidential election, and placed on the defensive by Arab fury at the demise of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Mr Hussein's effrontery has so far gone more or less unchecked.
He has also, as Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan minister who now edits Foreign Policy, points out in his introduction to this biography, bracketed himself with Fidel Castro as one of the very few from the region to have become a household name.He has achieved this partly through sheer verbal effrontery, as in his badmouthing of George Bush.
Some senators disapproved: Robert LaFollette, a Republican from Wisconsin, called the bill "the product of a series of deals, conceived in secret, but executed in public with a brazen effrontery that is without parallel in the annals of the Senate".Others saw nothing wrong.
These reflect badly on Mr Berlusconi as they show what sort of men and women acquired positions of influence under his long leadership.Antonio Piazza, a regional PdL leader, is accused of slashing the tyres of a disabled driver who had the effrontery to use a parking bay, reserved for the disabled, in which the PdL dignitary liked to leave his Jaguar.
Peru's foreign minister stood down officially for health reasons shortly after he had the effrontery to say publicly that a fresh Unasur summit on the subject was being mooted.Most Latin American and Caribbean governments are either ideologically close to the chavista regime, dependent on its oil-fuelled largesse, or simply disinclined to incur its wrath.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former justice minister, called it "effrontery" that is "not in keeping with the sense and purpose of our rule of law".
South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, has had the effrontery to suggest that big new investments in North Korea be put on hold until Mr Kim fulfils pledges made in 2005 and 2007, at six-party talks that also include America, Japan, China and Russia, to take steps to abandon his bombs and account for other nefarious nuclear activities (see article).
What with America on the defensive in the Middle East and distracted anyway by its disputed presidential election, Mr Hussein's effrontery has so far gone more or less unchecked.
The newspapers printed the information, the American public was inflamed, there was a CIA-backed insurgency and the elected government was toppled and replaced by a right-wing totalitarian regime.Most of the interest in this entertaining book comes from the meticulous effrontery of Bernays's campaigns; but there is an ideological conundrum, too, at the centre of it.
The Clinton administration has done more than enough to shield the steel industry from poor countries that have the effrontery to try to make a living; and yet it still reaps a political whirlwind.
But while the long-serving Jean-Louis Beffa was Saint-Gobain's managing director as well as chairman (a post he retains), his position as the "pope of French industry" meant that almost no one had the effrontery to mount a bid.
