Word: humbugs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...order, moral certitude, freedom from doubt. To him there is no deeper satisfaction than to be regarded as normal. His attitude echoes the values of a police state; when Road opened at Yale in 1984, then more effectively at Britain's National Theater in 1985, the pastor seemed a humbug, professing affection for an old friend while ruthlessly trying to have his way. In Charleston, Fugard directed and also played the pastor. He found great sympathy in the man and showed compassion for the common throng's yearning -- in this or any society -- for ritual pieties as an alternative...
...moment when President Reagan's own Yuletide fortunes were looking bleak. "This is our Christmas and New Year's message to the American people from the people of Nicaragua," said Ortega. "It is a message of peace, and couldn't be more concrete." Washington's response was Bah, humbug! "If the Sandinistas truly want to make a gesture," snorted State Department Spokesman Charles Redman, "it should be toward those in Nicaragua who oppose their oppressive policies...
...know where to begin," he opened one missive in 1950, and variations on this formula abound in his letters. He disarmed anger or outrage through self-castigation: "My selfish carelessness and unpunctuality I do not try to excuse as poet's properties. They are a bugbear & a humbug...
...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...