Word: pompousity
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Harry Truman's last Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, drove conservative Republicans to spluttering fury. Joe McCarthy jeered at "this pompous diplomat in striped pants." Richard Nixon spoke of Acheson's "Cowardly College of Communist Containment." In retrospect, the abuse seems odd; Acheson proved a tough, decisive realist who welded together the alliance that successfully contained the Soviet bloc until it self-destructed in 1989. Acheson handsomely reproduces the postwar era, the rich supporting cast and a sometimes surprising protagonist who, for all his bespoke elegance and fop's mustache, knew how, occasionally, to throw a punch...
Something is wrong with Dempsy, N.J., of course. As a moral to Price's story, this would be pompous. But the author doesn't offer a moral, simply an accurate portrayal of a society all of whose visible elements--cops, press, E.R. medics, pastors, mothers' groups, gawkers and stone throwers--take their energy from pain. A reliable energy source, the reader reflects; bloody hands make the world go 'round...
...Times reprints his pompous sketch of diminished "cosmic distinction" Barro could expect at Columbia. Oops...
...resort guest's propensity to write off the lives of the locals as insignificant in comparison to their own grandiose existence, they sometime forget that the freedom locals have is precisely what they lack. These pompous guests I see every day at the ski resort are people for whom freedom was traded for money, success and one week of skiing a year. These are people we are in danger of becoming...
...enough, and doggone it, people like me"?) plays the indefatigable correspondent Al Freundlich as a mixture of Jeff Greenfield's best-boy-in-class earnestness and Sam Donaldson's bouncy intensity. In this week's premiere, under the mistaken impression that he's replacing narcissistic anchor Pearce McKenzie (appealingly pompous Robert Foxworth), Freundlich orders up the Pope as his first guest and decides to jettison his longtime producer Gale (Megyn Price). He presents his Machiavellian decision as a favor to her. "You work here, what? 9 a.m. to midnight. When you go home, who's waiting to hear about your...