My sincerest apologies to anyone if this came across the wrong way. i didn't realize that it had a connection to the Merchant of Venice. to be fair, i thought shyster meant deceitful, as it was one of those 3500 words i memorized for the GRE (you can find it under "shyster" the Barron's GRE book) & i thought it was a synonym for a charlatan. i just did some hasty googling, and the etymology is apprently not connected to the character Shylock, but is nonetheless attributed to the character (i.e. false etymology). Regardless, connotation is how we look at a word despite its denotations. guess i'll have to remember that this a word not to be used. Thanks for pointing it out.

Sincerely,

Jim

PS. My opinion that Bloomberg is a conniving powerbroker stands. Now thinking of it, i hope that Tammany doesn't carry any derogatory undertones of its own.

edit: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-shy1.htm for a brief treatise on the etymology of the word.