Word: veneered
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...When Westerners speak of a democracy," he says, "they think of specific structures: a legislature or parliament, elections conducted by secret ballot, certain formalities of debate - in short, the rituals that were bequeathed to the ex-colonies in the hope they would remain house-trained." Soyinka argues that "the veneer of democracy" bestowed by the former colonial powers "has badly peeled." Its worst manifestation, in his view: the one-party states that have too often become en trenched civilian dictatorships...
...make everything work out neatly in the end, and as a result the final scene is highly anti-climactic. Instead of leaving the theatre unsettled and introspective, the audience wonders whether the film is principally a social commentary or an attempt to disguise conventional high school antics beneath a veneer of sincerity...
Artistically, First Affair isn't worth the time of day--the acting is horrid, the plot sappy, the filming glossy if not outright sleazy, Enough said. But beneath the veneer of Hollywood melodrama lies the perfect admissions office cover girl--Melissa Sue Anderson as Toby King. Putting aside for the moment the fact that King has an affair with her Expos teacher's husband, takes a bus home to Nebraska in the middle of the term, comes down with mono and skips numerous classes without having to drop out of school. King and her application to Harvard would have thrilled...
...veneer of decorum that shrouds the baser competitive instincts at Newport, R.I., during an America's Cup summer suddenly seemed in danger of self-destructing. As rain clouds and brisk northeast winds rolled in for the challengers' semifinals last week, the four remaining foreign boats-Australia II, Britain's Victory '83, Italy's Azzurra and Canada 1-did their best to concentrate on the business at hand. But a series of byzantine maneuvers by American yachtsmen threatened to turn the dueling on the high seas into an off-the-water battle over rulebook technicalities...
...essentially private acts, guilty violations of civilized standards. "Now and then," wrote Ernest Bennett about "potting Dervishes" in the Westminster Gazette in 1898, "I caught in a man's eye the curious gleam which comes from the joy of shedding blood-that mysterious impulse which, despite all the veneer of civilization, still holds its own in a man's nature." If most generals had their way, wars would probably be fought on other planets, free from inspection that leads to judgment, which itself may join the hostile forces...