Word: tepid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...contempt that is missing from modern life. A government official is fired from a high post and he cites "personal differences" with his superior. An actress is savaged in a gossip column, and she "resents" it. Mighty civilized behavior. To be sure, these people do not mean a tepid word they say. Deep in their smoking hearts what they yearn to shout is that the former boss and the gossip columnist are the putrescence of the earth, that they have the grace of herring, the brains of rock stars, that their faces would sink a fleet. They...
There were only 13 tepid smatterings of applause during the 28-minute speech. Clearly, the N.A.A.C.P. delegates were less impressed by what he said than by what he failed to say. He did not refer to the specific Administration policies that blacks fear most. These include cutbacks in funds for food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, school lunches, Medicaid, subsidized housing, job training, small-business loans and general aid to education. He did not mention his plans to funnel federal help through block grants to states, which many blacks consider a retreat to the days when dominant white...
...Tireless in an irritating way, MacNicol inspires little interest in his quest; he never seems the least bit ambivalent about clambering down into murky caves and facing off against the 50-foot lizard who has just torched the whole kingdom with a few sneezes. As a lover, he is tepid at best, remaining oblivious even when his ladyfriend mentions at one point that she's still a virgin, and the dragon only eats virgins, and isn't there something they could do about that...
...entered the Hilton's International Ballroom to address 3,500 union representatives. It was the largest audience he had faced in person since his Inauguration. As he made his pitch for the union members to support his economic program, Reagan's delivery was uncharacteristically flat. He drew only tepid applause, even meeting silence at a few punch lines. Only one sentence in the 18-minute speech would later be remembered. Noted the President: "Violent crime has surged 10%, making neighborhood streets unsafe and families fearful in their homes...
Without the distracting presence of cameras, Fallaci stress-tests the people she interviews. Her method makes most interviews on American television seem tepid. Only William F. Buckley Jr., with the practiced assurance of a Catholic debater, similarly confronts his subjects as an equal in discourse (and sometimes barely conceals his suspicion that he is the intellectual superior). Bill Moyers is apt to be overrespectful, perhaps because he often interviews people he admires. Mike Wallace so single-mindedly bears in on someone's vulnerability that he rarely shows the person in the round...