Word: disdainful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...just like the massive hurricane that triggered it, was woefully predictable. President Bush began emasculating the agency soon after taking office. Jane Bullock, a 22-year FEMA veteran who ended up as the agency's chief of staff during the Clinton Administration, says she sensed the incoming Administration's disdain during her first postelection meeting with members of Bush's FEMA transition team. "They said we had done a good p.r. job," she recalls. "I got the impression they had no idea what has to happen to deal with a disaster." Joe Allbaugh, Bush's first FEMA chief, labeled federal...
...necessary. Certainly, the terrorist attacks have changed little things, like the way we ride airplanes, and profound things, like the basic assumptions of American foreign policy. And now there is New Orleans, which, at the very least, should spark a reconsideration of what has become a casual disdain for the essentials of governance and our common public life...
...Britain for playing lovable if priggish buffoons on the comic series Blackadder and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. In Dr. Gregory House, Laurie and the show's writers have created TV's unlikeliest new hero. The Vicodin-popping specialist's own pain does little to quell his disdain for patients like a 9-year-old cancer victim ("She's such a brave girl; I want to see how brave she is when she hears she's going to die"). "Another actor would have posed as the mumbly, moody, acceptable antiauthority figure," says Robert Sean Leonard, whose character, oncologist...
Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, is not known for hugging pastors. Catholic and Protestant clergy have been convicted in connection with the genocide in his country in 1994, and Kagame has repeatedly stated his disdain for religious organizations. Thus a buzz went up in Kigali's Amahoro Stadium last month when Kagame allowed Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of the best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, to throw an arm over his shoulders and "pray for the President...
...nature, unabashedly blunt. As my roommates (or better yet, certain of their more unfortunate past male acquaintances) will attest, I have a difficult time hiding my disdain for people I don’t like or respect. In my personal life, I’ve gotten away with shunning unpalatable people. Among my roommates, it’s become a joke that’s recounted in the long nights before tests or after boy-jerks...