vaguely

She knows, vaguely, it has something to do with how California draws the boundaries for its 52 congressional districts, a convoluted and arcane process that’s not exactly top of the mind for your average person.

“The babies’ breathing,” he writes, “was impetuous, nervous, uneven, but the mothers’ slow worldly sighs, forceful and vaguely wise, got to me, straight to the heart.”

After all, he was fighting the combined power of the Tammany Hall political machine and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who united behind John Francis Hylan, a vaguely populist Brooklyn Democrat with few discernible positions.

Masli remedied this problem by introducing her to someone who vaguely claimed to be of German extraction.

Mr. Kaplow’s crackling script incorporates some historically accurate trivia involving other celebrities who showed up at Sardi’s, including one jarringly self-confident and vaguely obnoxious little boy.