Word: smug
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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YOUNG: I would first have to make a decision as to whether or not I was going to be more concerned about political manipulation and expedience, or statesmanship. In terms of simple arithmetic, the majority of white Americans have made it and are smug and want to hold on to what they've got. They're fearful. I can play up to those people, exploit them, capitalize on them, and get reelected. Or, I could say, that's not good statesmanship, that's not good for the country, and what I must do is to lead, I must not just...
Court Interference. Nixon shrewdly made use of some black complaints when he denounced the "smug paternalism" of whites who assume that a black school is automatically inferior to a white one. That assumption, he said, "inescapably carries racist overtones." Black separatists, in fact, do favor having their own schools, and some others have become skeptical of integration as a panacea. But most blacks still want it, or at least demand a genuine choice in the matter (see EDUCATION). Marian Wright Edelman, director of the Washington Research Project, found Nixon's "appeal to black separatists' feelings" clever but irrelevant...
...Angeles trial judge in a lawsuit that is still in progress. Nixon described as "probably the most extreme judicial decree so far" a Superior Court command that the city school district establish nearly precise racial balance throughout its 561-school system. (Coleman calls Los Angeles "a smug Northern district that hasn't done a thing about the segregation there.") Superior Court Presiding Judge Joseph Wapner, who did not take part in the Los Angeles ruling, found it "appalling that the President would use his office to comment on a case pending in our courts...
Cook, who is white, talked to white Americans and found terror in a section of Boston, fatalistic self-pity in Alabama, smug indifference in Wichita. Of course there are islands of amity and good will, but right now they do not seem to be characteristic of the situation. Concludes Cook: "The final impression is one of sameness: universal opposition to busing children to once-black schools, annoyance at what strikes whites as special treatment for blacks seeking education or jobs, reluctance to admit that local problems have local origins. Whites prefer to put the blame elsewhere. They...
...ashamedly supposed to. A modestly budgeted film without a name star, The Lawyer has magnificent pretensions. It seeks to analyze the dilemma of freedom of the press v. a defendant's pretrial rights, probe the personality of an ambitious young trial lawyer and lay bare the smug, self-righteous rural soul (which suffers from overexposure anyway). The result is a demolition derby that threatens to wreck everyone in sight...