Word: dismissiveness
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...aesthetic necessity as some people would have us believe (a spectator is always a spectator). It is linked to the system of representation in class society. Our goal is not to wrench the spectator out of his chair, as some accuse us (so that they can dismiss us as ultra-leftists); it is simply a question of arousing mental activity and the critical faculty. --the Dziga-Vertov group in Cahiers de Cinema, August...
Viewed in isolation, each single charge was shocking enough. Yet the persistent allegations about Watergate, about safes full of secret campaign cash and about ITT are so familiar by now that it is tempting to dismiss them as repetitive and tedious. Nonetheless, they suggest, in sum, that something is very much wrong with the mood and morality of Richard Nixon's Administration...
...groves of academe, from the incontinence of diaper days to the impotence of a palsied hand of poker in an old folks' death house. That will give you some brief notion of Dr. Hero. Yes, the central figure is our old friend and sometime bore, Everyman; but dismiss your initial, legitimate worries. This Everyman is no gullible Candide looking for the best of all possible worlds, no dour Diogenes straining for a glimpse of an honest man by lamplight. This guy is as slyly glib as a carnival barker, as horny as Portnoy, as resilient as a trampoline...
Postal Service officials try to dismiss their private rivals as "messenger services." Postmaster General Elmer T. Klassen admitted recently in congressional testimony that the Government corporation has been "so hellbent" on cutting costs that "we perhaps lost track of services." He pleaded for "more time" to build a fast, reliable service. National Postal Founder Peter Olsen proposes a different solution: have the USPS concentrate on handling letters and publications, and turn over all third-class mail delivery to the private entrepreneurs. Such mail has always lost money for the Government, Olsen notes, but "we have been making a comfortable profit...
...enemies-there is an ample supply-dismiss her as vulgar, venal, vindictive and untrustworthy, a puffball of bluff. Even some friends regard her with the affectionate respect that they might accord a pet barracuda. "The first time she asked me to a party," remembers Client Dyan Cannon, "she said, 'Will you wash your face before you come? I want people to see what you look like.' I was intimidated by her dictating, pontifical ways at first, but now I just don't let her be my mother." Her fans find her clever, charming when she tries...