Word: motly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cleverly attacks a group's validity based on false claims about what makes that group a group. If one were to look only at Mansfield's remarks, the notion of civil rights for homosexuals would indeed sound laughable after all, why should a collection of irresponsible thespians, bon-mot formulators and civilization-haters demand legal protection because of an identity based on these very traits? They function usefully, Mansfield generously concedes, as society's sideshow freaks, but that's simply not a good enough reason to assure their civil rights...
...Quincy also-rans greeted the paraders from Leverett with catcalls and healthy complement of garden vegetables (tomatoes, carrots and broccoli were the mot common projectiles...
...buzz today about discontent, about social gloom and political drift, a crisis of faith in the future and a fading sense of national identity? An identity crisis -- in France? It sounds as unlikely as the notion of Cyrano de Bergerac fumbling his sword or groping for the mot juste. In his 1983 book The Europeans, the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini, a seasoned and mordant observer of the Continental scene, cites Edmond Rostand's fictional Cyrano as the quintessence of French character, at least as outsiders exaggerate it: the boastful, cocksure Gascon whose fellow provincials are defined in Rostand's play...
...Hollywood has so much fun hating itself that the venom can taste like fine wine. Carrie Fisher puts plenty of savory laughs into her, well, perhaps slightly autobiographical script, and under Mike Nichols' direction, Meryl Streep parades her dazzling comedic gifts; she adds spin and sizzle to every bon mot...
...final triumph is Streep's. Forget the globe-trotting tragic-heroine roles that made her famous. Under the sorcerer's wand of director Nichols she proves again she is our finest comedienne; like the late Irene Dunne, she adds spin and sizzle to every bon mot. By sinking ever so slightly into world- weariness, Streep can locate the desperation in Suzanne's banter while keeping her delivery featherlight. And she can sing too, bringing her uniquely precise passion to ballads and down-home rave-ups. "I don't want life to imitate art," Suzanne says with her usual blithe exasperation...