Word: sham
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...plots and interrelationships ultimately amounts to a struggle of poor, generally powerless men and women to preserve what passes for dignity and self-respect--usually at each other's expense. Their problem, as Brecht shows it, is that they have no understanding of dignity beyond the sham that passes for gentility among a capitalist society's ruling class. They have a passion for outward virtue combined with an infinite corruptibility. They parody bourgeois family life, but are loyal only so far as self-protection permits. Peachum is forever misquoting scripture to defend arguments for fraud and betrayal. Tiger Brown...
...come on, Mr. Sidey [May 6], y'all been generalizing about us down here. As born, bred and proud Southerners, we disapprove of Richard Nixon's sham presidency as much as any Yankee in Massachusetts or New York City. Why, we could round up a pickup truck full of pro-impeachment folk without leaving the county...
Tired of the machinations of Charley Finely. Sick of Bob Short's ridiculous franchise hopping. Repulsed by a designated hitter rule that gives cripples Orlando "Cha Cha" Cepeda and Tony Bad Wheel Oliva a new lease at the plate. Then your only possible alternative to that sham of an American "League" is the pure baseball of senior circuit...
...real producers decided that just wouldn't sell. This very funny movie was the first film with Mostel and Wilder. Their most recent has Zero Mostel hilariously and violently turning into a rhinoceros. But he was so funny there that he helped turn Ionesco into a travesty and a sham. He's never quite so funny in The Producers, but Mel Brooks's film contains no pachyderms...
...hostile reader could easily see the Nicolson marriage as a sham. Two wealthy, upper-class homosexuals make the mistake of marrying and then spend the next half-century trying to keep up appearances. Judgment hinges on an evaluation of Vita's sincerity and the objectivity of her son. If they deluded themselves, this Portrait of a Marriage is worthless. Most of the other books produced by the family are more glib and polished--but whether or not they will be remembered depends on the long-run verdict on the free, civilized form of marriage these two proper Britons pioneered. Whether...