Word: speciousness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...familiar. He approved the so-called Huston plan, which permitted illegal means (including burglary) to combat radicals. He established the "plumbers" unit, ostensibly to plug leaks, and it used illegal methods (wiretaps, forgery) to embarrass or spy on political foes. He impeded an investigation of the plumbers on specious national-security grounds while his aides tried to use the CIA and FBI to help the coverup...
Arguments against equal admissions have proven specious. Contrary to predictions, colleges which have moved toward sexual equality have not suffered decreases in the contributions of tradition-minded alumni. Women graduates, it has been said, would contribute less money to Harvard than male alumni. Last Spring, the average pledge of Radcliffe seniors was higher than that of Harvard seniors...
...good porn? Does it stimulate you? Does it make you (as some puritan souls seem to think) run out of the theatre mad with lust, ready to violate the first female body that comes along? Ironically, if pornographic films had this effect, perhaps one could ascribe some specious artistic quality to them. Good art, as they say, possesses the power to make you ruminate, react, and reach...
Emphasis on the physical vulnerability of women in an abduction-murder situation is specious: against an attacker with a weapon even the strongest man would be equally defenseless. But to speculate as the Globe writer does, that the women were psychologically vulnerable, that their low selfimages and naive ideas of trust led them to victimize themselves, is more than specious; it is destructive. It is destructive because, although most of the time such analyses are presented as intelligent, informative discussions of women's problems, in reality they only serve to entrench the stereotypes they seek to illuminate...
This kind of specious comparative analysis underlies the analytical parts of the book. Kelman evidently sees himself as a modern Tocqueville, journeying to what he describes as the Communist future in East Germany to warn Americans that they are better off with what they have--nice consumer goods in large quantities, and, incidentally, text-book freedom. When Kelman crosses over to West Germany, he ritually cements his warm relationship with America by self-consciously buying a Coca-Cola...