Word: condescending
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...threat. You know what Joe Frazier said about Muhammad Ali? When he saw him lighting the Olympic torch, he said they should have pushed him in. People thought Frazier was being callous about Ali's suffering. But Joe Frazier respects Muhammad Ali as a warrior. You can't condescend to him; he's not a puppy or something. Show some respect...
...best children's books follow the Green Eggs and Ham rule: Serve up a dish made of anything imaginable as long as it's delicious. Merely edible will not do. The books below, our picks as the best of 1998, are perfect for the human small enough to condescend to sit on your lap and big enough to grasp that every single thing written in these books could happen, even to them. Though we've categorized them (because that's the adult thing to do), the best books as always are beyond order...
...procedure of liberalism is lawlessness. Liberals have no patience for democratic processes and political persuasion; after all, the people voted for Reagan--twice! So liberals do not condescend to build national political and legislative majorities. That approach is too tenuous since the people might not accept the putative wisdom of liberalism. Liberals instead use the courts and the bureaucracy to accomplish that which they cannot accomplish at the ballot box. They push their programs on Americans by fiat, without the deliberation or compromise a diverse, continental republic otherwise demands...
...author follows his characters with care and a measure of affection, and so does the reader. Lennon does not condescend, or marvel at what fools these mortals be. He lets the single survivor of the crash, an old Italian storekeeper named Bernardo, reunite with his American son after a period of walking around dazed and frightened. But what his narration says is roughly this: Most lives are tolerable but fairly dull, a bit confused, and very unlikely to change. Glorious messenger does not come riding, alas. Or so Lennon sees things now. He is quite convincing, and probably right...
...French -- the contemporary of Pierre Corneille, whose tragedies revolved around ideas of free will, exemplary virtue and conflicts between desire and duty, enacted by characters from a classical past who spoke ardently and directly to a 17th century audience. Rome made Poussin; but after him, Rome could no longer condescend to Paris. By the time of his death, he had helped create an irreversible shift in the cultural balance of Europe...