Word: humbug
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...incredible argument offered by Mark Helprin which had three main points: 1) That Prof. Safran's ties to the C.I.A. violate nothing--neither the university's rules regulating such ties nor normative/ethical rules governing scholarship and intellectual life; 2) that normative/ethical rules governing scholarship and intellectual life are humbug anyway, especially when set against the imperatives of state; and 3) that the real scandal surrounding l'affaire Safran is the combined pompous posturing of moral rectitude by Safran's colleagues and the Harvard administration (on both of whom Helprin comes down very hard...
...variety of radical causes. She denounces slavery in America and anti-Semitism in England, and demands better education for women. After the fall of France's King Louis Philippe in 1848, she confides to a friend that she sympathizes with the revolutionaries. To her, Victoria Regina is "our little humbug of a queen," and she suggests that the world's monarchs should be put into "a sort of Zoological Garden, where these wornout humbugs may be preserved...
...still possible to offend anyone except the ghost of Avery Brundage and a few no-show Iron Curtain sports commissars by announcing the obvious, that the defunct Olympic ideal of amateurism has always been humbug? The prohibition against pros was not high-minded in its origin, it was high-hat: a snobbish social exclusion of riding instructors, fencing masters and the like who sweated for their keep and were considered high-level servants. It was intended to ensure that those who participated in this festival of running and jumping were the sons and daughters of gentlefolk. Other Olympic ideals...
...labeled a "jobs bill" is casting himself as Ebenezer Scrooge. Or so believe many Representatives and Senators who are scrambling to push supposed job-creating measures through the lameduck session of Congress that is scheduled to end this week, while simultaneously growling to themselves the equivalent of "bah, humbug!" A startling number confess to the deepest skepticism that any of the bills would actually create a significant number of jobs any time soon...
...walked away, I thought I heard a faint "Ho, ho, humbug...