Word: pompously
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...Books. Politically, says Orwell, he wrote "against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism." But where such a stand, in the case of another writer, might be trivial or tedious or pompous, Orwell made it into a passionate starting point from which to scourge all varieties of intellectual cant and hypocrisy. He denounced the Blimps who failed to see that Mussolini and Hitler were enemies of freedom, and he denounced the intellectuals who thought Stalin was any better. Much of his energy was devoted to carrying on a guerrilla campaign against the woolheaded fellow travelers who were poisoning English intellectual life...
Despite Hedda Hopper's hysterical warning that "Invasion U.S.A. will scare the pants off you," everyone leaves the R.K.O. Boston fully clothed. The film, a clumsy propaganda package, is never plausible and only occasionally exciting. It opens in a New York bar, where a cattle baron, a pompous Congressman, and a selfish industrialist are ridiculing America's war preparations. After a professional seer has given them visions of a vanquished America, these men leave the bar sadder but wiser. The audience leaves only sadder...
...Parts Grease. Last week in his "Strictly Personal" column, syndicated in 16 papers around the U.S., Harris walloped writers of swashbuckling historical novels; rose to the defense of unstuffy clergymen ("Dull[ness] and pompous[ness] . . . has nothing to recommend it, neither piety nor good sense"); punctured the idea that Europeans are more "romantic" than Americans; criticized a congressional investigation of obscene books ("There is not, and has never been, any real evidence that literature, even of the lowest order, has ever 'corrupted' morals") ; and tossed off a few of his typically irreverent "Purely Personal Prejudices" ("Whenever I meet...
...papa of the film, played by Charles Boyer, is not the pompous autocrat of Father. He is but a chuckling bystander watching the antics of his clansmen, who are notorious in the community because of their many conquests. There's Uncle Desmond, smoothest operator in Quebec, who collects garters and mounts them on cardboard. He inherited his art from Grandpere, still dapper at 67 years and spryly pursuing his latest widow. What story the film has develops when the adolescent (Bobby Driscoll) imitates the attitude of his uncles and gets in trouble...
Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, brute symbol of ferocity and military leadership, stands at one extreme of Men at Arms. At the other is Captain Apthorpe, who stands for all that is most ridiculous, most pompous, most bumbling and yet most sympathetic in human nature. He has spent most of his life in Bechuanaland, and he joins the Halberdiers with a "vast accumulation of ant-proof boxes, waterproof bundles, strangely shaped, heavily initialed tin trunks and leather cases." As an antiseptic precaution he has his "Thunder Box"-a portable chemical toilet built of oak and brass...