Word: cynic
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...Wilson's years at Harvard also made himsomething of a cynic. "I came here absurdlyexpecting Harvard students to be the cream of thenation," says Wilson. "And was disappointed tofind that most of us, alas, were hardly that...
...fact that we are going to have vices, the question is, Is it better that they be publicly despised or celebrated? The choice is not really between a society of vice or virtue -- we will never have the latter. The choice is between a society of hypocrisy or cynicism. The cynic does not admit to doing wrong. The hypocrite has the saving grace of paying homage to virtue by at least publicly acknowledging its sovereignty. "Any one may yield to temptation," wrote William Hazlitt, "and yet feel a sincere love and aspiration after virtue: but he who maintains vice...
...sneering cynic, contemptuous of Mozart's "pretty" music, and the record company huckster, who likes "pretty" music because it sells, offer us two sides of the same worthless coin. They both depend on Forman's film and is assassination of Mozart the genius, the child prodigy whose music was great because it was the work of a great man. The film liberates us from what may be an illusionary image of Mozart, but leaves us with no reason to judge the music as worthwhile. The notion that the "voice of God" resides in the notes of this music carries little...
...cynic -- Faludi, for one -- might argue that the messenger herself makes the message easier to hear. With her schoolgirl demeanor and easy eloquence, Faludi defies many unfair but well-embedded stereotypes about feminists. PEOPLE magazine photographed her riding her bike in San Francisco and posing beneath a tree with her boyfriend, Dr. Peter Small. The timing of the book helped too, coming just when the Senate and the American media rediscovered sexual harassment and when puzzled talk-show hosts were groping for a new vocabulary to capture the outrage that women expressed. Had the book been published back...
...cynic would be missing the point of modern medical science. We may not have a cure for every disease, alas, but there's no reason we can't have a disease for every cure. With silicone implants, small breasts became micromastia. With injectable growth hormone, short kids become treatable dwarfs. Plastic surgeons can now cure sagging jowls and chins, droopy eyelids and insufficiently imposing male chests and calves. So we can expect to hear soon about the menace of new diseases such as saggy-jowlitis and hypopectoralis...