Word: churlish
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...risk of appearing churlish and mean-spirited in this festive season, I have to say I'm not sure rerecording the song is a big help. Band Aid has been criticized before for its cheesy tune, and Do They Know It's Christmas? may not be the right question asked of Muslims in Sudan. But my gripe is about the way the song reinforces the popular impression that all Africans are starving as they wait for heroic Westerners to come and save them. In 1984 Do They Know It's Christmas? did a lot of good for the people...
...dead and more than 2 million homeless in what Washington calls genocide. The new version of the song is mellower than the original, but the lyrics are the same: In Africa this Christmas, "the only water flowing/ Is the bitter sting of tears." Still. At the risk of appearing churlish and meanspirited in this festive season, I'm not sure re-recording the song is a big help. Band Aid has been criticized before for its cheesy tune, and Do They Know It's Christmas? may not be the right question asked of Muslims in Sudan. But my gripe...
...ceiling. Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis should feel no shame in asking the U.S. (Britain and Israel, too) to help foot the security bill, now set at $1.2 billion. But even then, we'll be paying for the Games for years and years to come. It would be churlish to suggest that all the money and hard work went to waste. We have a new light-rail line and a spanking new airport, among other badly needed infrastructure improvements. And while they're still counting the number of visitors to the Games, the tourism ministry assures us that the industry could...
...athlete who might be undone by his own hubris, and you have an Athens experience that's hard to match. In the end, American teenager Michael Phelps did not reach the prize he was aiming for - the most gold medals won in a single Games - but it would be churlish to suggest that his haul of six gold and two bronze was anything less than spectacular. And the fans who streamed into the Aquatic Center - which was sold out every evening, unlike so many other venues - saw a week of thrilling races with an array of breakout stars like Japan...
...perennial court of inquiry that is small-town life. The meticulous carpentry of Haruf's prose, all those spare run-on sentences, owes debts to Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy. Haruf's words lend weight to the takeout-pizza boxes and so forth of modern Colorado. So is it churlish to point out that behind the facade of its steadfast language, this is a fairly sentimental book? And one too much in thrall to its own lugubrious music, which is no substitute for narrative drive. It's a fine line between gravity and listlessness. Time and again Eventide drifts gently across...