Word: earnest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When planning began in earnest last summer for this week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S., Beijing was offered what, to other leaders, might seem tantalizing: the intimacy of a visit to the Bush ranch or Camp David. But the Chinese wanted the pomp of a formal White House welcome. And so they will get it--but with a "social lunch," not the state dinner they had desired. "We haven't had many state dinners," a White House official says, "and we think everything we do is special." Still, in the careful dance of diplomacy, such...
South Park meets Zadie Smith's White Teeth in this offensive, riotous cartoon about a multicultural high school in South London. The trio of main characters includes scheming, crude Keisha (imagine a black female Eric Cartman); Natella, the earnest South Asian class brain; and Latrina, the bigoted white working-class bombshell. Like many good satires, Bromwell is rooted in the idea that shallowness and venality transcend color and creed. The faculty ranges from an assortment of Anglo ignoramuses to Iqbal, the greedy, sleazy Middle Eastern headmaster. And when the immigrant students discuss their favorite foods and cultural activities...
...tiny fawns. Their whimsical acoustic-guitar songs and gentle banter totter out on spindly legs to nibble at funny bones. The duo, who claim to be the "fourth most popular folk parodists in New Zealand," sing about the usual stuff--mistaken identity, killer robots, racist dragons--but with an earnest, blinking naiveté. It's a hemisphere away from the witty social commentary that reigns on America's comedy circuit. "I guess we're kind of nerdy hipsters," says Bret McKenzie (except he pronounces it "nurdy hupstas"). Jemaine Clement, on the other hand, prefers to describe their comedy as "awkward...
...public saber-rattling over Iran began in earnest this past weekend, as both the Washington Post and the New Yorker magazine reported on internal debates inside the Bush administration on a military option to deal with Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Monday morning, President Bush dismissed the reports as "just wild speculation," saying such mind games happen "quite frequently here in the nation?s capital." But it?s a safe bet - assuming Tehran, which shows no sign of backing down, doesn?t retreat - that such "wild speculation" will ripen into "informed speculation" and finally into a real live war plan...
...would prefer it if you didn't quote that last sentence in an ad). One reader I respect, Stephen King, has even compared it to Catch-22 and The Catcher in the Rye. It's just that This Book Will Save Your Life is more densely packed with earnest twaddle, starting with the title, than any other book I've ever seen...