Word: humorless
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Police went after a few of the bombadiers, but they were pretty powerless against this sort of attack, all 3000 of them. They stood around about every 100 feet looking uncomfortable and humorless, but striving for that "objective" attitude which their chiefs had announced they would maintain. One officer, however, betrayed his feelings when two girls asked if they could cross in front of a part of the parade that was being held up at an intersection. "They might abuse you, but go ahead," he said...
...rugged appearance. For most of his 59 years, Romney has been a salesman--now he's the politician with the salesman's style. In public and private, he talks with the same force and verbosity; his speech is quick and idiomatic, and, at the same time, earnest and humorless without a trace of wit or sarcasm. He smiles incessantly, but his laughs are usually reserved for uncomfortable moments at press conferences when reporters prick him with those touchy questions he has no intention of answering...
...town house cops a packet; the hostess goes with it, and so does Priscilla Tolland. In fact, a head count shows that six previous survivors of the Powell epic are killed off in this novel. In Powell's war, only the rotters flourish-notably Kenneth Widmerpool, whose humorless egomania and bounderish one-upmanship have won him critical status as one of the great comic creations of modern English fiction. He is now on the make as a staff major, a virtuoso of bumf, and he chews poor Jenkins' ear in a war of total paper...
Like it or not, Senator Robert Kennedy has a reputation he can't shake for hanging tough, cool and humorless. The combination might be surefire at the ballot box, but at the box office-sure chill. Or so it seemed until a few weeks ago, when out came Wild Thing, a new 45-r.p.m. recording of a big-beat tune. The vocalist is a dead ringer for Bobby and he purportedly is at a recording session...
...political race." He was under no illusions. A spoiler redeemed by a sense of humor about the political grotesqueries of New York-and, happily, about himself as well-Buckley merely set out to give his lumps to all comers, notably Lindsay, whose campaign Buckley characterizes as "sheer, utter, hopeless, humorless, philistine fatuity." For all that, Buckley got a respectable 341,226 votes-not bad for a gadfly...