Word: downplay
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...keys to the popularity of the loutish British rock band Oasis is that its members make no secret of the fact that they want to be popular. American rock acts, especially all those fading alternative ones, often try to downplay their success, complaining, apologizing and obfuscating all the way. But after you've performed on the Grammys, hired a team from Silicon Valley to set up a multicolor interactive Website, or gabbed about your new record with Regis and Kathie Lee, all the moaning about the trials and tribulations of fame comes across as disingenuous and disagreeable. In contrast, Oasis...
...dissent still divides the party even at the leadership level. The uprising fizzled last night after a small group of disgruntled Republicans met for less than 20 minutes without the company of the GOP leadership to voice their disenchantment with the Speaker. The poor showing led organizers to downplay the significance of the unrest. "I don't think the Speaker is in any trouble in any sense of the term trouble. This is politics," said Lindsey Graham, who organized the gripe session. John Kasich chimed in: "Do I believe there is some serious movement against Newt Gingrich? The answer...
Sedaris reserves his highest, most poetic register of speech, the one in which wheelchairs are called "electric chariots," to downplay the danger he faced, on and off the road, from a larcenous, knife-wielding stud to a dildo collector...
...been disqualified in an earlier ballot. The NF already rules three other cities in southern France: Toulon, Orange and Marignane, another Marseilles suburb. Record unemployment and a large North-African immigrant population made all cities susceptible to the NF's anti-foreigner campaign. While mainstream politicians tried to downplay the most recent victory of Jean-Marie Le Pen as an aberration, TIME's Bruce Crumley calls the development worrying: "This concentration of power in the south provides the party with the base to launch a major offensive in the run up to next year's national elections." Scandal-ridden Socialists...
Fortunately, they freely confess to fallibility. Indeed, such is their concern over being misperceived as color mafiosi that at conference end, a dozen CMG officers gathered in the press suite to downplay their own significance to the assembled media. That the assembled media consisted of a local reporter, a trade journalist and myself proved no deterrent to their earnest onslaught. CMG only forecasts, insisted our briefers; it doesn't dictate; the consumer is the ultimate arbiter...