Word: simonal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...burgeoning blog community, dubbed the Fatosphere, where bloggers rail against antiobesity messages in the media. Although a second group, the International Size Acceptance Association, started in 1997, NAAFA has emerged as the foremost defender in the press of overweight Americans, throwing its weight around on issues ranging from Simon Cowell's fat jokes on American Idol to airlines' making obese passengers pay for a second seat. (Read "Brazilian Obesity: The Big Girl from Ipanema...
...oratorical gifts of Obama (unlike the President, he shuns teleprompters) and the eagerness to engage that carried Bill Clinton to the top. Unlike Clinton, Booker sometimes needs to read crowds a bit better. At a community event, he dropped a reference to the television show Frasier while playing Simon Says with a few dozen African-American kids and their parents. (Frazier was the last name of one of the participants.) The kids were mystified...
...Malcolm, based on Tony Blair spokesman Alistair Campbell, is a splendidly splenetic creature, with instant obscene jeremiads for anyone who crosses him. When Simon's assistant Judy (Gina McKee) says that certain classified information "falls well within my purview," Malcolm explodes: "Within your purview? Where do you think you are, some f---in, Regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some f---in, Jane f---in, Austen novel!" And the movie is not one of those genial Brit rom-coms like Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral. It's closer to the high-IQ ranting...
...main butts of the Brit politicians, scorn are the Americans, whom they hold in contempt curdled with envy, as in: We passed the running-of-the-world baton to these people? Simon's chief aide Judy (Lina Mckee), seeing baby-faced college grads in high positions, notes that "They're all kids in Washington. It's like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns." Malcolm is less subtle. Recalling Britain's vanished might, Malcolm tells one of the American brats, "We burnt this tight-assed city to the ground in 1814, and I'm all for doin' it again...
...enjoy In the Loop you needn't know which character is supposed to be what government bigwig; just relax and savor the insults. Every person, monument and company gets a derisive nickname. CNN is "the Cartoon News Network." Toby, Simon's curly-haired, cherub-faced aide, is variously addressed as "Fetus Boy," "Love Actually" and "Ron Weasley." (The last is an apt epithet; as the plot will show, Toby is more than a little weasely.) Chad, a tall, thin lad on the American team, is "Young Lankenstein" and "the boy from The Shining." James Gandolfini plays a dovish U.S. General...