Word: alecks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...were broke in 1969, so Bono remade them into a nightclub act of kitsch hippiedom. By 1971 they were starring in the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, the CBS variety show that brought a jokey, mass-market, safe feminism to TV as Sonny played emasculated buffoon to Cher's smart aleck. It was all his idea. As Cher said during her astonishing funeral oration last week, "He had the confidence to be the butt of the joke because he created the joke." But he was also in charge of the joke. The show ended in 1974 when Cher left Sonny, accusing...
...groups." We must be grateful for the rude health and increasing diversity of popular culture, which is both more accountable to the public and less so to social engineers of any stripe. American Canvas repeatedly points out the obvious, that pop is slave instead to "the marketplace." A smart aleck could point out that "the marketplace" here seems to be a pejorative for "an audience...
Sandra Bullock provides a couple of surprises: first, that we don't see her character so much as her top billing would indicate; and second, when we do, we wish we wouldn't. Trying through rushed, distracted delivery to evoke the smart-aleck single-mindedness of her law student character, she rapidly becomes irritating and uninteresting. Not helping is the romantic story line between her character and Jake that fizzles yet remains referred to later...
...ready to shatter. She was sitting next to her husband while he argued with Katie Couric about smoking--and then argued some more, and some more. "I'm not certain whether it's addictive," Bob Dole insisted, like a mule-stubborn father who won't concede that his smart-aleck daughter is right. Why did Dole dig in so hard on the losing side of the smoking debate? He went through hell to quit the habit, and he used to get into fights with his first wife about her chain-smoking. He even lost his own brother to emphysema...
...code of gestures: Elizabeth pats him on the lower back ("Bob, we need to get going"); she rubs his hand ("Don't look so glum--smile!"); she loops her arm around his waist and firmly tugs ("Quit talking to these reporters, and don't make any of your smart-aleck jokes"). On the podium, she will nudge him gently toward a better camera angle or come to his aid by grasping an unwieldy gooseneck mike that...