Word: smug
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fleet Street subjects with a tart tongue and irreverent wit; in Chichester, England. A reporter at age 14 and an editor at 24, he later took charge of the Daily Mirror and shocked its sleepy circulation--and sober content--with bold headlines, pro-Labour positions (dubbing Britain "too damn smug"), prurience (he ran the first photo of a topless beauty) and pluck...
...when the results of the high yield for the Class of 2002 came in, administrators became even more smug. These pre-frosh seem to have proven what the administration already knew to be fact: Harvard can do anything short of vomiting on its students, and they will still pay. The worst part of this atrocity, of course, is that for the perpetrators, there are no consequences...
...heritage, and those involved with Seinfeld have always acknowledged its debt to earlier series. Seinfeld has said that the show emulates Abbott and Costello, for example. And Michael Richards' portrayal of Kramer is a frank homage to The Honeymooners' Art Carney. But Seinfeld's fans have always been rather smug when they declare that the show is "about nothing" and that its prime directive is "No hugging. No learning." The idea seems to be that to find humor in trivia and to avoid sentiment is very happening, now, today...
...think about is how TV-like the frame-rate is--so good, in fact, that I start to suspect a hoax. I mean, how would I know if there really was someone on the other end? It could be recorded. WAVE, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, I type, smug as Alan Turing. She waves. I run screaming from the office...
Doubtless Redford believes in the ideals that animate this movie--as who among us does not? But the very fact that he is so well known and widely applauded for his many good, politically and artistically correct works offscreen helps make the movie seem self-regarding, self-righteous, even smug. There was once something of the wicked kid in Redford's screen character, and one fondly imagined that he would someday grow up to be, if not a dirty old man, then a subversive and obstreperous one. Certainly we never guessed he'd end up a rustic bore like...