Word: fatuousness
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Overall, The Miracle of Language is hard to fault. One shortcoming is Lederer's "linguacentricity" (to coin a phrase) as regards the study of language. It is annoying to encounter fatuous comments like "No doubt English was invented in heaven" or to have him assert that the angels speak English...
...best man? In off-the-record comments, White House aides agree with the analysis of Harvard law professor Christopher Edley: "If Thomas were white, he would not have been nominated . . . ((Bush's)) meritocratic language is fatuous unless one takes both color and ideology into account in deciding what it means to be the best qualified...
This is not to be confused with yet another fatuous proclamation of yet another New South. Nor is it to ignore those regional backwaters where the old ways are almost as entrenched as the communities are irrelevant. Nevertheless, the South that was is dead, and the South some had hoped would take its place never grew out of the cradle of old dreams. What is lurching into existence in the South is purely and contemporaneously mainstream American, for better and for worse...
...Minister that the countries of Eastern Europe actually wanted German investment and that this "did not necessarily equate to subjugation." The Powell memo alleged that "abiding" characteristics of the Germans, "in alphabetical order," included "aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality." The concept of permanent national character is generally fatuous, and in this case Powell's words make a poor fit for Kohl, the biggest German of them all. Kohl can be intimidating because of his size (6 ft. 3 in.) and might sometimes appear aggressive, but no more so than Thatcher. If he now looks assertive, it is only...
This indicates a radically transformed market structure. In art as in other markets at the end of Reagan's economic follies, America sinks and Japan rises. In this context it is fatuous to utter bromides about art's being the Common Property of Mankind. Americans now begin to view the outflow of their own art with bemused alarm -- just as Italians and Englishmen, at the turn of the century, watched the Titians, Sassettas and Turners, pried loose from palazzo and stately home by the teamwork of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen, disappearing into American museums. "The Japanese are awash...