Word: pretenders
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...wreckage of the two World Wars, and the chilling, post-modern pessimism that came after, great art became hard to come by. That was when people started telling us that "greatness" in art is a subjective business, culturally constructed and so forth, and this neat device let them pretend that (save me your howls of anguish) Toni Morrison deserves a Nobel Prize in literature, or that Jackson Pollock's paint-spattered canvases are 20th century versions of the Mona Lisa, or that Elton John deserves a knighthood...
...There's a wonderful conspiracy that we will all pretend that Teller never talks. I was once in Times Square, and a cop stuck out his nightstick, hit me right in the chest and said, "Name?" And I said, "Teller." He nudged his partner and said, "See. I told you I could make him talk...
Most politicians try to impress people by showing how smart, how engaged and how busy they are. Bush does the opposite. He likes to be underestimated, likes to pretend you're telling him something he didn't already know. And he likes to be seen as unflappable. No problem is too tough that it can't be licked with a little of the common sense that rules on his 1,600-acre property in Crawford, Texas. If that means people think he's not quite as clever as all these city folks he has working for him, all the better...
Clinton was, Marcus writes, "out to show the country someone willing to cut himself down to size, and at the same time try to take off and fly. A man willing, for a moment, to pretend he could be Elvis...
Clinton made mistakes early on as a campaigner, many of which came from trying to pretend that her birthplace of Chicago was an outer borough of New York City. It bordered on the sacrilegious to don a Yankees cap when she had been a well-known Chicago Cubs fan. It remained such a toxic moment that she couldn't risk taking the D train to the Subway Series to join in the purest of Big Apple moments. Rather than the usual grip and grin, she embarked on a listening tour, looking at times like Margaret Mead visiting the Samoans...