Word: squirming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Teachers have it made. They get to send students to detention, assign homework and give tests. They can issue commands like "compare and contrast" and watch their charges squirm. There is but one drawback to wielding such power: the daunting task of grading essays. For every student who pulls an all-nighter wading through Great Expectations, there is a teacher who has to slog through dozens of tortured expositions on the symbolism of Miss Havisham's aborted wedding feast...
Famine, disease, wrongful prosecution. The injustices of the world are many, but there may be none more dreaded or debated than a blown call late in a National Football League game. Coaches and players foam; league officials squirm; and frazzled fans dial the personality-disorder hotline called sports talk radio. Pro football, which made violence a Sunday virtue and Vegas the national bank, is the beast...
Those who squirm over Shepard's life-style might have felt more righteous last week when it was reported that he'd made a pass at a bartender in Cody last summer, got punched in the face and falsely reported to police that he'd been raped. (No charges were filed.) If only a punch in the face were the stiffest penalty for making a pass...
...twitching, equivocating and storming out of the room. To believe that, all you had to do was ignore the weight of public opinion that's been pressing upon this event all year. Most Americans already know what they dislike about the President. What was brought home by the Clinton squirm session, and then by the transcripts of Monica Lewinsky's testimony that were released the same day, is that the man who really unnerves them is Ken Starr...
...than just the President's tattered defenses. By its very example, his investigation furthers a truly unwholesome idea: that relations between consenting adults--even juvenile, unappetizing and wrongful ones--can be criminalized. All you have to do is corner the people involved, question them under oath and make them squirm...