Word: smokescreening
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...early books, like The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple was a snoop as well as a sleuth, "the worst old cat in the village." Her famous garden was a smokescreen, and her fondness for observing birds through powerful glasses could be turned to other purposes. As time passed, Dr. Haydock had to tell Miss Marple gently that gardening was making her rheumatism worse. She became quieter and less flighty. But her methods of detection were always the same. Where Poirot used his "little gray cells," Jane Marple extrapolated from her knowledge of St. Mary Mead. A swindler? She remembers...
...allow for bullshit: the participant is viewed by a full stadium and the people in their living rooms, he either comes through with men on base or he doesn't, either makes the necessary magnificent backhand on grass or doesn't Language is too often used as a smokescreen for banality or as with pieces like Tom Wolfe's, excuses for grand meanness and superiority. Action seems more honest and the supreme action in these days of American political quiescence--the action which we can all see and understand, unlike politics--is sports...
Many French and British officials are convinced, in fact, that the environmental issue raised by U.S. opponents is actually a smokescreen. The French are still smarting over last July's arms deal in which the U.S. aced out their Mirage F-l combat plane by persuading NATO to choose the American-designed F-16 as its standard fighter. They see U.S. opposition to the Concorde as a move to protect the American aerospace industry, which despite a bad year still supplies 90% to 95% of the commercial aircraft flown outside the Soviet Union. The British take a similar point...
...York is sick, to be sure, but it's the kind of sickness that gets better with time and care. This disease is the sort a child would come down with, the sort any responsible parent would devote himself to curing. If the whole thing is a smokescreen, Ford's concern with the people of New York bears little relation to the effect his policies will have on them--it is at least consistent with most American political rhetoric. A few pieces of home truth serve to obscure and even replace the real issues involved, and force the debate onto...
Some of the conflicts seem to be an intentional smokescreen. The controversy focuses on three people...