Word: brutishness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act - the strongest global warming bill ever to make it to the Senate floor - died last Friday after a nasty, brutish and short debate, most environmental groups found reason to be cheerful. "We have taken comprehensive global warming legislation farther than it has ever gone before," National Resources Defense Council president Frances Beinecke wrote on her blog. "A national limit on global warming pollution is inevitable...
...fact a healthy tradition of self-criticism and improvement. The tendency toward navel-gazing and negativity apparent particularly among our brightest citizens, while sometimes excessive, remains far preferable to conformity and laziness. If the rest of the world feels inclined to characterize the United States as close-minded and brutish, let them; our most scathing criticisms often come from within. In the end, it’s these that matter, because they spur us on to better things: anything to disprove the doubters...
First, let's talk about the sex. There's a lot of it in Ang Lee's new film, Lust, Caution: sweaty, acrobatic coupling that is, by turns, brutish and tender. And the camera doesn't shy away from any panting detail. Explicit even by today's standards, the movie works hard to earn the adults-only NC-17 rating it has been given in the U.S. Shooting the scenes was so exhausting that Lee and his cast could only work half-days. On one occasion, lead actress Tang Wei fainted...
...squatting in Palestinian-owned buildings. At 6:20 a.m., riot police bashed in doors as teenage settlers on the roof hurled down stones, oil and eggs at the police, while Wagner played over loudspeakers. (As every Israeli knows, Wagner was Hitler's favorite composer, and the music was a brutish way - for the benefit of TV news crews - for the settlers to draw a parallel between Israel's security forces and the Nazis...
...however, by the very end of the night, find the old, gaudy patriotic spirit stirring within me, burbling about with all the cheap Heineken I had guzzled at an American bar’s Fourth of July extravaganza. I was disconcerted at first with all the loud, brutish American men in their polo shirts that could barely contain their oversized muscles, and the unelegant, embarrassingly drunk and skankily dressed American girls who squealed in a language I definitely could not understand. But as I got drunk, I came around to it all, and by the time the national anthem started...