Word: fatuous
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...lifeguards live, how dams work, the philosophy and history of shopping malls. She is always honest in her examination of a setting or person. She damns through accuracy, not forceful moral argument. In "Bureaucrats," for example, she perfectly captures officials' self-importance and insularity. Placing contradictory statistics after bureaucrats' fatuous proclamations, she quietly pillories them. But she can nevertheless convey their own sense of misguided sincerity...
...cause a run on another. In 1943 the rationing of shoes touched off hoarding of clothes, and the rationing of canned meats and fish started panic buying of canned vegetables and fruit. Another lesson is that scarcity is not essential to hoarding. In 1973, reporting a Congressman's fatuous remark that supplies might grow short, TV Host Johnny Carson touched off nationwide panic buying of toilet paper...
That is the second riddle about Thomas and his philosophy. He bears no resemblance to the fatuous Dr. Pangloss, who chirped about this best world while stumbling through a series of catastrophes. Voltaire's doctor was an a priori optimist, and nothing that he saw or experienced could rattle his foolhardy faith. Thomas reverses this procedure and writes about things he has observed, grounding his conclusions in the tiniest material details that the world can provide. Because he has peered at nature's building blocks more closely than anyone but fellow biologists, and because he can translate...
Horner said the charge that there are no qualified women eligible for tenure is a "fatuous argument and doesn't even make sense...
Certainly, more than the faces and physiques of the greats have lent contours to the archetype. It is premature if not fatuous to say that any man looks like a President before he has done the job. Sixscore years ago, many voters thought that one candidate was much too awkward and homely to fit the task...