Word: downplay
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Easy Cop-Out. Even A.A. requires the alcoholic's commitment to change. Many workers in the field are now trying to downplay the idea-espoused by Marty Mann 30 years ago-that alcoholism is a disease. The label may make problem drinking worse by absolving the drinker of responsibility. An overemphasis on the psychological causes of alcoholism can have a similar effect. "A search for the roots of the personal problems that cause a person to become addicted can become an easy cop-out," says Psychiatrist Robert Moore. "The classic therapy game becomes a technique of protecting his alcoholism...
...charged that law schools downplay criminal as opposed to corporate law because of a direct correlation between the money a case brings a lawyer and the "intellectual challenge" he draws from it. "Lawyers are the handmaidens of American corporate enterprise," he declared...
Some behavioral scientists accused news organizations of giving undue attention to the kidnapings. Newsmen were hardly unaware of the kidnapers' headline-hunting instincts. Yet it was impossible to deliberately downplay the kidnapings, as was done with street rioting in the '60s with some success. Not only were the abductions compelling news, but also the S.L.A. demanded, on pain of Patricia's death, that its propaganda be printed and broadcast in full (see THE PRESS...
When, at the most recent presidential news conference, Richard Nixon sought to downplay the gravity of his continuing crisis, he noted acidly that in the days following his decision to resume the U.S. bombing of Hanoi last Christmas there were charges by some that the President had "lost his senses." Nixon neglected to point out that the most prominent politician to offer this instant psychoanalysis was a fellow Republican, Ohio Senator William Bart Saxbe, and it was neither the first nor the last time that Saxbe chose to unload his blunt thoughts about the Administration. Yet last week, in still...
...efforts to get the Faculty to revamp the Commission on Inquiry to hear student grievances, Bok's shareholder program hints that he is genuinely interested in student opinion. That is more than can be said for his predecessor or for the Faculty majority, which likes to scoff at and downplay any student participation beyond the adolescent level...