Word: smugness
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Early this year the Bonn government shoved through a law restoring the old caste system, its provisions guaranteed to keep the snug, smug bureaucrat happy. Samples: civil servants may not be dismissed for incompetence; vacancies need not be made public and opened to competition. The Allied High Commissioners, in vetoing the new law, reminded Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of his promise last November "to liberalize the structure of government and to exclude authoritarianism," insisted that he produce a more democratic civil service...
...cure for dangerous ideas is not (as the Communists think) suppression. But neither is it the smug Western pretense that ideas do not matter much, anyhow...
...film's failure stems mainly from a futile attempt to blend Actor Webb's amusingly smug, know-it-all characterization of Mr. Belvedere into a story intended to stir up some emotional warmth. The result is seldom comic and never moving; it leaves Webb without much material worthy of a Belvedere and the movie's would-be warmth without the kind of character that might ignite...
...Other smug but nonpartisan Frenchmen took up this battle cry. "I like Coca-Cola," wrote a M. Dreyfus to the Paris Herald, "but [Coca-Cola's advertising] has ripped deep into what the French treasure most-their language. One now sees posters and trucks bearing the inscription 'Buvez Coca-Cola.' You can say 'Buvez du Coca-Cola' or 'Buvez le Coca-Cola' but you cannot say 'Buvez Coca-Cola' because this is pidgin French...
...began to strike little needles of sound. Vag counted them absentmindedly . . . seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten o'clock. The idea sank in slowly. Suddenly Vag sat bolt upright. How could he have been day-dreaming? The specter of examination welled up in his imagination in all its horror. The smug fat text and the cruel purple type on the assignment sheet seemed to be deriding him with silent mockery. Vag tore the ticket stubs to shreds, clenched his teeth, and read...