Word: fawning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...membership had its privileges. For as little as $55 a year, consumers could twinkle in fellowship with such glitterati as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ella Fitzgerald and Meryl Streep. All one had to do was wave one's little piece of green, gold or platinum plastic, and waiters and clerks would fawn prettily. Such potent snob appeal once seemed irresistible -- until American Express "cardmembers" began weighing the costs of privilege against the benefits of more plebeian credit cards. While the AmEx elite shelled out annual fees, Discover clients were issued free cards. Amex users had to pay their bills in full each...
Despite Klein's fame, virtually the only place to read about him has been in fawning profiles commissioned by the glossy magazines that depend on him for ads. As a rich, handsome man he is a big target, though, and the arrival of a tell-all expose like Obsession: The Lives and Times of Calvin Klein, by Steven Gaines and Sharon Churcher (Birch Lane Press; $22.50), was almost inevitable. The authors do not fawn -- they revel in describing the people Klein copied, the deals he made, the collaborators he turned against. Above all, they dwell on his heavy drug...
...change of networks and an earlier bedtime; it marks the ascendance of a new generation. When Late Night with David Letterman made its debut on NBC in 1982, it was the prankish outsider, a subversive send-up of talk shows, television, the entertainment world in general. Letterman refused to fawn over guests; with the help of Vegas-obsessed bandleader Paul Shaffer, he took deadpan aim at show-biz phoniness. He griped about his NBC bosses, turned stagehands into stars, conducted elevator races in the hallway. His medium-twisting inventiveness was influenced by Ernie Kovacs, his man-on-the- street playfulness...
...White House Correspondents Association's annual dinner the previous weekend, bombed with jokes about Senate minority leader Robert Dole and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh that turned out not to be funny. The dinners are one of the few times that the permanent Washington establishment is primed to fawn over the President. But the range of acceptable presidential behavior is narrow, from self-deprecation to groveling, and by no means can the evening be used to settle scores -- even with the person who killed your stimulus package. The dinner produced three days of apologies and retractions and gave Dole...
Many critics agree that Shakespeare was a fine playwright. Of his plays, many of the same critics praise Hamlet in particular. But this megahit does feature two flat characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who appear, fawn sycophantically over everything that moves, and then disappear, apparently to die horribly for no particular reason...