Word: harrumph
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Conservatives harrumph at all this adulation. Before declaring his greatness, we insist that we should wait for him to accomplish something for the country. (Spike Lee didn't even wait for the election. Last summer he said we were soon going to measure time by "BB, before Barack, and AB, after Barack.") In some of his supporters, we see the spectacle of secular-minded folk looking for a messiah. But we risk looking like spoilsports or sore losers, and we can sympathize with the excitement over the first nonwhite President, even if we would have preferred that someone else...
...billion arms sale to the Taiwanese, a much more troublesome issue in the eyes of China's government. That deal prompted Beijing to curb, but not cut, military contacts with Washington and brush off some arms-proliferation talks. All in all, the Chinese response amounted to a diplomatic harrumph - the reaction China will probably offer if the Uighurs go free in the United States...
There's a sly hipster syncopation to his cadence, "Been stuck there for a while." But the folksiness pretty much disappears when he starts answering questions. Obama's actual speaking style is quietly conversational, low in rhetoric-saturated fat; there is no harrumph to him. About halfway through the hour-long meeting, a middle-aged man stands up and says what seems to be on everyone's mind, with appropriate passion: "Congress hasn't done a damn thing this year. I'm tired of the politicians blaming each other. We should throw them all out and start over...
...November with the same old demagoguery, but his strategy has betrayed the nation's best interests. It has destroyed any chance of a unified U.S. response to a crisis overseas. Even the Wall Street Journal's quasi-wingnut editorial page cautioned, in the midst of a typical anti-Democratic harrumph, "[No] President can maintain a war for long without any support from the opposition party; sooner or later his own party will begin to crack as well...
...Sihanoukville on the southwest tip of Cambodia remains underwhelmed by tourists, and it is that sense of peace that makes a weekend here worth the modest cost of the stay. Guidebooks scoff that there's nothing to do?it's difficult to even find an Internet connection, they harrumph?but that is precisely the point. Everything else to do in Cambodia requires hiking and studying and getting up early; Sihanoukville is for the lazy or those suffering from temple overload. The four-hour, $3 bus trip from Phnom Penh is the most strenuous part...