Word: humorless
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...daily notes on everything from barometric readings to the progress of 29 varieties of vegetables at Monticello--yet he somehow lost track of his debts and died bankrupt. The historian Paul Johnson has catalogued a few of the inconsistencies: Jefferson was an elitist who complained bitterly of elites; a humorless man whose favorite books were Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy; a soft-spoken intellectual sometimes given to violent, inflammatory language ("The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants") that in our day gets quoted by paranoiacs holed...
...conversation, Purdy is hardly humorless. In fact, he's downright funny, even absurd. Cherub-faced, with a bowl-shaped haircut unsullied by the professional stylist's scissors, he gives off a dual impression of utter youthfulness and uncanny erudition. He uses the word ontology as naturally as other young men say "dude," but he's quite capable of vivid straight talk. Of his idealistic upbringing he says, "There are families that eat hot dogs and families that don't. We were a family that didn't." And his complaint about a tedious party thrown by his publisher to introduce...
...charge that Riley is humorless is alsofound to be baseless in Kelling's study. "ChiefRiley regularly comments about the world andevents with a Jack Benny-like droll humor that, ifone listens carefully, is self-mocking....He is abit of a character," the report states...
...enters Thursday is nothing like the well-mannered setting of the courtroom. The hearing could look more like a World Wrestling Federation match, a forum where Starr's words could be drowned out by jousting between, say, Barney Frank, Democratic maestro of the verbal stiletto, and Bob Barr, the humorless but relentless Republican former prosecutor. The House Judiciary Committee includes some of the most ideological members of each party, politicians more likely to go for the jugular than the essence of a witness's arguments. Starr will have to defend the logic and fairness of his actions in a place...
...women's movement was too strident and humorless, and now it's too sexy and self-centered. The ultimate goal of feminism is a world in which women can choose what to do and be. The most damage to feminism comes not from the media but from individual women who overlook the need to continue to bond and support one another in every aspect of their lives. BETH LERCH Los Angeles...