Word: pretend
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...this is fine, since none of Willis’s fans pretend to enjoy his act on a musical level. Rather, they enjoy the comic relief involved in the almost vaudevillian (and certainly pathetic) spectacle of Willis’ psychopathology. They come to laugh at the leper’s festering lesions in a shameless display of Schadenfreude. This in itself is a disease inherent in American culture: We enjoy seeing others flounder and make fools of themselves...
Much of the time, these homoerotic jokes were harmless. Renny McPherson 03, a Crimson editor, remembers the soccer team would frequently pretend to neck in the dining hall...
Integral to Hax's winning way is how clear she is about her own deficiencies. Rather than pretend that she can fix problems with a paragraph, she is quick to recommend that people in real trouble get professional help. While other columnists sometimes sound as if they're writing from a high perch, Hax says her takes come from accepting her own flaws and embarrassments. When she snaps at readers to wrench their heads out of their navels, it's because she knows how self-absorbed she can be. Asked what shocks her most in her letters, she lists...
...look so easy, you wondered if the only reason the U.S. has not seen a hijacking in 20 years was because hardly anyone was trying. It's a wonder why not; the Microsoft flight simulator and Fly! II--the two most popular simulators for personal computers--allow you to pretend to fly between the World Trade Center towers, and into them. Anyone looking to practice can buy the software off the shelf...
...situations. A Christmas at home of sorts does take place, but nothing is easily resolved or learned. Even though we see them become a little older and wiser, they are not necessarily transformed; surely crisis will strike their lives again. Franzen isn’t so foolish as to pretend that these are the definitive episodes in their separate or collective lives. He has merely captured the Lamberts moving through the circumstances of the larger world. It is such a simple thing, but the significance of his accomplishment...