Word: downplay
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That’s not to downplay the importance of a Beanpot title, or the cachet associated with it. But at this stage in the ECAC schedule, with Harvard tied with Colgate and just three points behind Cornell in the standings and jockeying for playoff positioning, a loss to, say, Rensselaer would be far more meaningful in the long...
...Expect nothing from those Arab leaders. But what about the Europeans? They too were surprised by Iraqis' celebrating on election day. Their first instinct, like Kerry's, is to downplay. Hence the questioning of the legitimacy of the election on the grounds of inadequate Sunni participation. That concern for full participation in an Arab election is as touching as it is novel. Europeans have never had trouble recognizing the legitimacy of regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and Damascus, where there is no participation by anyone. Indeed, many Europeans championed the inviolability of Saddam Hussein's regime, under which election participation...
...these concerns, some members of the Bush administration have sought to downplay expectations concerning the success of the elections. Officials have begun emphasizing the fact that the vote itself is only the first step in a long process of constructing a new government. The National Assembly still must take office, elect a prime minister, establish remaining government agencies and field a police force able to maintain security. It will also be charged with the monumental task of writing a constitution to facilitate elections later this year or in 2006. Any one of these steps may undermine the project of establishing...
Kansas is a key flashpoint in this struggle. Back in 1999, a conservative state school board attempted to downplay the importance of Darwinism by removing from the required statewide science curriculum references to dinosaurs, the geological time line and other central tenets of the theory. Evolution, they argued, is "just a theory" and should not be favored over other theories, such as I.D. In the next election, Kansas voters gave moderates an edge on the school board, which promptly dropped the effort to revise the curriculum. In the 2004 election, however, conservatives retook the board, and while a curriculum advisory...
...youngsters between ages 10 and 15 did not agree with their parents about the severity of their condition. More often than not, it was the parents who didn't realize how bad the problem was. "Kids don't want to worry their parents or miss sports, so they downplay things," says Sears...