Word: smarts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...close to an answer as you'll get here is that Burn After Reading is an essay in the cocoon of ignorance most of us live in. It pushes the old form of movie comedy - smart people saying clever things - into collision with today's dominant model of slackers whose utterly unfounded egotism eventually worms its way into an audience's indulgence. Which is to say that most of the people here seem like bright lights but are actually dim bulbs. They're not falling-down stupid; they radiate the subtler variety of idiocy that can be mistaken for charm...
...That's certainly true of the CIA analyst played by John Malkovich. Osborne Cox: his very name is steeped in two denominations of old money. After decades at the Agency, he has perfected the look and the attitude of a career spook. He wears a smart dark suit and that inevitable flourish of the house eccentric, a bow tie. Osborne's Olympian contempt for his superiors, his overcareful pronunciation of French words ("mem-wah"), the modest shock value of a Princeton man spicing every sentence with the f-word - all these mark him as hailing from that generation and class...
...disparity? Is it because rock is inherently rebellious and therefore anti-conservative? Is it because Republicans, according to some studies, have more sex than Democrats and therefore don't need to join or listen to rock bands to prove they're cool? Is it because their smart parents told them you can't make enough money to reap the rewards of tax breaks by starting a band in your garage...
...clever drumming-gorilla ads helped too. Morgan Stanley said in a recent report that "unlike with many other consumer stocks, we expect Cadbury's earnings growth to accelerate." Says David Morris, food and beverage research director at Mintel International Group, a market-research company: "The spin-off is a smart move. Investors had felt these businesses weren't getting their appropriate valuations when they were combined." As stand-alones, they can also grow by attracting merger partners, he says...
...under a 25-year agreement that only Hershey can terminate. The idea at the time was that Hershey had the distribution power Cadbury was lacking to compete with Mars and Nestlé. But losing control of your own brand's destiny in a major market doesn't look smart today...