Word: smugness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...invert Fox News's disingenuous slogan of "We report. You decide," you get a sense of how the traditional media regards their mission. It is, "We decide. You read." Or, "We decide. You watch." It is the smug view that we know what it is you need to know, and we're going to spoon feed it to you whether you like it or not. Granted, this view has been transformed over the last few years by the desperate quest for ratings and readers, leading to the ever greater prevalence of so-called "soft news." This is the principle...
...though, the debate is shaped by the old divides of North and South. It's easy for Westerners to be smug and self-satisfied, having convinced themselves that they've eliminated racism. But for the most part, the powerful industrialized nations have not been racism's victims, but its perpetrators. And as easy as it is to beat up on India for denying caste oppression or the Sudan for its continued slavery, the poppycock of Britain's "slavery is a crime now that we're no longer practicing it; it was simply regrettable when we were doing it" reflects...
...everyone can write a book but somehow we expect, without quite thinking about it, that everyone should be able to read a book. Maybe that's a smug assumption, like expecting that everyone has a refrigerator. Maybe the assumption is obsolete...
...action show knows when to stand still and shut up. Tartakovsky uses generous pauses for drama and laughs, and has no problem going 10 minutes at a stretch without dialogue. Jack (you'll have to watch to see how he gets the name) never dispatches an enemy with a smug, hip one-liner; he's an appealingly naive, reserved wanderer, as might be found in one of the spaghetti westerns Tartakovsky also cites as an influence. You might call Jack a soba western. Or sashimi sci-fi. Either way, you'll slurp...
...weeks before last friday's Constitutional Court 8-7 acquittal of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of corruption charges, you could see the toll the impending verdict was taking on him. The eyes sagged. The usually smooth skin seemed more wrinkled. The smug smile would occasionally straighten, the corners of his thin-lipped mouth almost turning to a resigned frown. If he was bitter, however, he would never admit it, not to a reporter, nor to his Cabinet, and probably not to his friends. Yet the possibility his tenure would be abbreviated by a guilty ruling had become the defining...