Word: banality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clearly legible in his three-eyed face. I was disappointed: Adolf Eichmann seemed quite normal, a man like other men -- he slept well, ate with good appetite, deliberated coolly, expressed himself clearly and was able to smile when he had to. The architect of the Final Solution was banal, just as Hannah Arendt had said...
Unfortunately Rushdie rests his case on banal political rhetoric; what little analysis The Jaguar Smile does offer makes a Big Mac look like a cordon bleu original...
Rhodes' digressions into the strategies and technologies of World War I and the saturation bombing of cities 25 years later demonstrate how those martial rules became a grisly form of accounting. It was a matter of cost per thousand, the fewest dollars for the most kills. In this banal light, a nuclear bomb is the pinnacle of efficiency, a macabre paradox because it was brought about by the best minds working within a great humanist tradition. For the sake of spiritual harmony, it could be said that The Making of the Atomic Bomb recounts the second greatest story ever told...
...resounds with remarks betraying his utter contempt and distaste for the entire experience. Who was so cruel as to force this assignment upon him? Most perplexing, however, is his description of not Bye Bye Verdi, but the musical genre itself, as "an art form that is perhaps the most banal and vapid vehicle in the American cultural desert...
...whole thing just sets your head spinning. Clean-cut young Harvard lads decked out as well-endowed women, putting on a musical--an art form that is perhaps the most banal and vapid vehicle in the American cultural desert--for their well-dressed, well-mannered and well-off patrons and friends...