Word: preening
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...commander showed Americans not their handsomest face but their best one. Gruff and compassionate, speaking in flinty, illuminating sentences, Schwarzkopf made sense of the battle plan in its grandeur and awful human cost. Though he is the first U.S. general since Ike to earn gloating rights, he refused to preen. Perhaps he tacitly recognized that Iraq was not the most formidable foe -- closer to Grenada than to Nazi Germany in war-making savvy and casualties inflicted. But one suspects that this man's tone would be the same at the end of any war: a powerfully plainspoken mixture of triumph...
...Rowlandson's work found echoes in Europe. Particularly so in the efforts of Goya, who sometimes drew on English satirical prints as sources for his own graphic work. One can detect more than a few appropriations of Rowlandson in the Caprichos. And one of Goya's scariest images, They Preen Themselves -- one demon giving another a pedicure -- seems to come from Rowlandson's group of a woman cutting an officer's toenail in The French Barracks, 1786, though how Goya actually got to see this particular Rowlandson is a mystery...
Vision, delights to the eyes, the narcissism of seeing and being seen guides those who converge on Boston for the Head. People preen, primp, look, laugh and wave at old friends, newly discovered even if the name ("Cape Cod, right?") escapes. But not too self-conscious, now. Look as if you belong here. Smile...
...elementary school in New Haven, Conn., uniforms are just being inaugurated for this school year. Detroit's Mumford High School is raising a ruckus by handing down a get-tough dress code aimed at eliminating flash. The code's language is starchy enough for a military academy ("Misdirected students preen about, modeling flashy, expensive clothing and exerting little energy in their academic pursuits"); on the proscribed list are leather coats, jogging outfits, shorts, designer glasses, designer jeans and "custom-made briefcases...
...finer points in the performance, the kids jump up to argue with the assistant director, Mali Hlatshwayo, in rapid-fire Zulu. He thumps his chest. "Emotion," explains one of the cast. At the stage door, starstruck American youngsters gather for autographs, but the kids of Sarafina! don't preen like the show horses of your average chorus line. The girls are mostly hefty. The boys tend toward skinny. Plain faces, remarkably ordinary. Bopping and hopping onstage, they maintain a wary reserve off-hours. Their English is lilting, halting, and political questions are turned aside for fear of reprisals back home...