But all that gives no reason for smugness and complacency.
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It was a master class in smugness cloaked in humility.
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He warns against pride, hypocrisy and smugness in the Church.
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Yet as the film wore on, my smugness wore off.
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When Trump took the lead, he recalled, the smugness disappeared.
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Smugness is probably not the smartest response to such failures.
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"As long as that difference doesn't reinforce smugness" — God forbid!
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" Grip's boss advises: "The military — don't ever surrender to their smugness.
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At too many levels, smugness set in as memory was lost.
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It's a handmaiden to smugness and sanctimony, undermining its own goals.
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Christian, magnetic and intelligent, strikes an appealing balance of smugness and sensitivity.
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My smugness gnawed at me for weeks after she died, then months.
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But racism, more than any imaginary smugness, explains how Obama led to Trump.
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There was a friendliness in my voice, but there was also a smugness.
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Young's smugness didn't help, nor did the device's yellow color and funky design.
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Scenes like this expose a smugness in the filmmaking that disdains its audience.
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She couldn't help a little smugness, even if satisfaction was a mere siren call.
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Normalcy can give safety, warmth, the smugness of a person whose plate is full.
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The egregious smugness and righteousness exemplified by both sides seem equally obnoxious to me.
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He speaks quietly, although his mouth often twists into an expression of petulant smugness.
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Smugness is a little bit of a danger in all of the Robert Galbraith books.
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His face played a symphony of emotions: satisfaction, triumph, smugness, consternation, confusion, realisation, horror, disgust.
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What all his buffoons share is a misplaced smugness and blinding lack of self-awareness.
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I'm a Christian, and I find the smugness of Republicans both upsetting and anti-religious.
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You skewer the institution's prurience and smugness, its failure to engage in any self-reflection.
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She writes, she has said, to root out her own smugness, self-righteousness and stupidity.
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After the election, it was a source of boundless cosmopolitan smugness for Mr. Khan's supporters.
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Its premise might have felt more novel, its insights more trenchant, its smugness easier to stomach.
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Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen unwittingly revealed its ugly underbelly: the smugness, the self-aggrandizing posturing.
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There is a great deal of smugness in all of this, and worse, a dangerous paternalism.
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Strong opinions are currency; and a big payout is not uncommonly accompanied by a trace of smugness.
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For a long time, the prevailing posture of the Silicon Valley élite was smugness bordering on hubris.
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The most surprising consequence of Carson's smugness and complacency is to make — and who would have imagined?
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Humor can help smooth over your annoyance (and their smugness) even as you stand up for yourself.
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Each of them has achieved a singularity that doesn't resort to smugness, cynicism, or familiar negating gesture.
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Titillation and smugness are fine but the truly indecorous and the blurring of boundaries are another matter.
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The meme effectively shut down the toxic element of the fandom by using fans' smugness against them.
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The Americans also leans away, deliberately, from the nostalgia and smugness that so often define period pieces.
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I expected a journalism procedural with a heavy veneer of smugness on the virtues of the old media.
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There's even a Bob Ross emoji, which is used to convey chillness or smugness, usage and user depending.
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Delbanco aims to balance his antislavery allegiances with caution about the smugness that can come with historical hindsight.
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"There was a certain smugness among Western nations that we'd beaten most of the communicable diseases," Hamilton says.
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But even though it sometimes strays into smugness and sermonising, Canada has something important to teach an uncertain world.
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"For a combination of smugness, banality, and towering ignorance, it is difficult to top Terry Gross," he once sniped.
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Of course Real Time was nominated again, even though that show is increasingly powered only by its own smugness.
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Here is the flawed nation, one strange facial expression at a time, without a trace of smugness or parody.
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On occasion, he drifted over the line into smugness or condescension, dangerous ground when going up against Ms. Klobuchar.
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Harder to measure is the effect on management smugness, which does not lend itself to a highly quantitative study.
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But then, that evening, riding on a wave of smugness from my google-debunking,I started to feel like shit.
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But if the anti-Trump movement has a crippling defect, it's smugness, and Wolff's book reflects and richly feeds it.
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This sardonic approach is not without risks, and the movie's polished surface, to my eye, bears a sheen of smugness.
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The pleasure is not a smugness but a very physical shiver—a deep tickling that's hard to explain or simulate.
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But if you're in a relationship and considering taking the Dry January pledge, don't be too quick with the sober smugness.
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We go from Lance's pettiness to LeBron's bemusement to Lance's deviousness to LeBron's frustration to Lance's smugness to LeBron's genuine amusement.
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And yet, by the time he did stinkers like "Due Date" and "The Judge," his carbonated sarcasm had curdled into smugness.
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Their heavy eyelids and closed smile suggest our fat cat's trademark smugness, but beneath, one can sense distance, conflict, perhaps… melancholy?
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His smugness and combativeness eventually gave way to a mechanical recitation of rehearsed soundbite snippets ostensibly provided by his legal counsel.
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"And lots of reporting -- particularly in television commentary -- there's a self righteousness and smugness in people kind of ridiculing the President."
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In Kavanaugh's case, it encouraged years of proud obnoxious partying, belligerent public behavior and a smugness about being above the rules.
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Dunking on them both was a reflexive burst of endorphin-charging smugness, and soon became shorn of any political overtones whatever.
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In the book Further Tales of the City, published in 1982, Maupin poked fun at the smugness of a Gamma Mu member.
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No, it's not because I'm suddenly imbued with the smugness of a straight white man graduating from an Ivy League cum laude.
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The spirit of smugness, of furious resistance to change, belongs to everyone; water roars down avenues as easily as cul-de-sacs.
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There's a potentially toxic smugness to the entire film, as Deadpool smirks and swaggers through a long, eventually wearying series of creative executions.
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"Smugness is lethal," said the affable Mr. Solondz (who, in the show, makes the entitled parents the targets of his most pointed satire).
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Yes, Coward was a terrible snob, and there is a certain smugness about "Present Laughter" that it's best not to examine too closely.
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In our smugness and self-assuredness, many of us laughed off Trump and his supporters throughout the campaign, refusing to take them seriously.
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He's aligning himself exactly with the views of many of his supporters who disdain what they see as the elite's political correctness and smugness.
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Back then, Ms. Simmons had identical dummies made to her specifications, their faces registering what can be read as wide-eyed innocence or smugness.
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The smugness and self-righteousness of the GOP elites who are turning their backs on Trump just three weeks before the election is shameful.
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However, with just a little learning, they develop an overconfidence—even a smugness—that leaves them vulnerable to make more mistakes down the road.
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This Scarpia's sadism is more courtly than glowering; some more supple singing from Mr. Sgura in the second act gave intriguing glimpses of smugness.
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Then there was the overt smugness of some commentators, as if Ms. Argento's presumed fall from grace nullified the entirety of the #MeToo movement.
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Nell is sympathetic, insomuch as she is at least aware of her own smugness (which, at its worst, takes the form of bad faith).
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The smugness of knowing I was getting private treatment from a doctor at work, on work time, made me feel a little less sad.
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And Shalhoub, for his part, is miscast in the role of Southern Republican "Red Wheatus" — even if he's game to luxuriate in his character's smugness.
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Thankfully, the entry of Zak (Jim Sarbh), a billionaire tycoon with a permanent scowl on his face takes some of the attention off Shiv's smugness.
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Sleepless and enraged, we pace through our days under the choleric guidance of a president whose only two emotions seem to be smugness and wrath.
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There are also hints of a plot, as the seasons progress and Evelyn (Evelyn Emile), another member of the group, expresses irritation at Cal's smugness.
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What makes this play so appealing, rather than polemical, is the way Mr Norris also teases at some of the smugness of like-minded theatre goers.
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Other young minds will see the popularity of these four siblings, and they'll interpret the associated arrogance, smugness, and machismo as somehow instrumental to their success.
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In my immense smugness I checked Google Maps from my home address to the stadium and learned that it was the same old 2200-minute drive.
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Reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal suggest that management smugness and carelessness contributed to the two crashes of its 143 Max 8.
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"I worry, I worry for the business, for the perception of the business, not just Trump supporters, they see that smugness," he said in May 2017.
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And Emmett Rensin made the case that a culture of liberal "smugness" and condescension toward white working-class voters has alienated them and created a backlash.
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But those of us who think we've got it sussed should probably realize that smugness in the face of everyone else being wrong isn't a political position.
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Baldwin's O'Reilly was spot on from voice to the subtle facial gestures to the O'Reilly-like smugness that makes you want to throw something at the television.
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Such smugness introduced so early makes the couple an obvious target for a novelist's moral instruction, yet it also somewhat diminishes our engagement with their unfolding struggle.
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It was this misreading of the electorate and the complacency of many Democrats (like me) which bordered on smugness that allowed for Trump to sweep to power.
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There's a quiet smugness to "my other half", as though it's been said by someone who still can't get over the fact they are in a relationship.
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I caution against smugness, suggesting that their own children may well ask them how they allowed society to ignore conscious individuals and deprive them of their rights.
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Bob Woodward told Axios' Mike Allen that the press is covering Trump with a certain smugness, but it's not the media's job to make his presidency an editorial.
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In fact, the sense of intimidation that we once felt has been turned on its head: Many Canadians now observe America's political spectacle with a sense of smugness.
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He smiles to himself, again and again, with a worldly smugness that isn't too far removed from Election's Tracy Flick during her fleeting moments of high-school triumph.
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The preëlection assessments suggested that Clinton was likely to win, and Assange, watching the early returns, became irked by the smugness that he detected among the BBC presenters.
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Maybe most Americans focused on the moments when Clinton tried to talk over Trump's interruptions, or maybe they saw her smiles and laughter as a sign of smugness.
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The MAGA hat-wearing student who faced off with a Native American Vietnam-era vet says his smirk seen 'round the world wasn't out of smugness ... just peaceful defiance.
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Our popular culture is overripe everywhere with under-edited and incautiously canonized ex-geniuses, but for blithering smugness and abject doofery there is just no one like Big Luke.
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One reason HBO's "Silicon Valley" is so brilliant is that it captures a specific kind of smugness: the insistence that every billion-dollar app exists to change the world.
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If Mr. Norris aims to amuse us by satirizing the personalities of these pedophiles, he is not the kind of the playwright to let us bask in our smugness.
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Now his older brother Doug has a strong chance of becoming the premier of Ontario, and his rise is crushing the smugness Canadians have been feeling about Justin Trudeau.
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Their smugness far outstrips anything attributed to liberals: they applaud their own heroism in the ongoing "Meme War," complaining of marginalization even as their candidate enters the White House.
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The story of squares shocked out of their smugness by an outlier is almost a genre by now — see Sarah Ruhl's "How to Transcend a Happy Marriage," among others.
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But the result is a kind of smugness, as if our tickets had bought us entry to a mutual admiration society instead of a proper grudge match of ideas.
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If either Mr Duque or Mr Petro wins, it will be because voters are fed up with mediocre economic growth and with the smugness that Mr Santos seems to represent.
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Dig beneath the spasms of insecurity, fear and smugness that Canada's intellectual class has exhibited toward the United States, and you find an underlying attitude of warmth among ordinary people.
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Rachel fetches DeMario — radiating the smugness of a man who's sure he's about to get a rose — from the locker room and brings him back to Lexi in the gym.
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What gets ignored in this smugness is the inconvenient fact that Trump doesn't need to win the black vote, he just has to get himself a large chunk of it.
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Neither does smugness make us any less likely to be suckered, and in fact, it can make us more open to humbug, so long as we can sneer at it later.
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I'm not going to lie: I don't typically like Bateman in anything and have found his smugness (not easily washed off from his Arrested Development days) to be a major turn-off.
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These buzzwords can serve as a helpful shorthand for discussing complicated dynamics of identity, history and power, but the smugness that '80s liberals detected in their ranks can be spied here, too.
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Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm.
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"We own the only high-rate offloader west of the Mississippi," Jim Levine says at our first stop, the massive megaproject called the Montezuma Wetlands, with some justified smugness in his voice.
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As a rapper, he jabbers, scampering through dense clusters of rhymes in a deep, vibrant, honey-coated snicker, with a touch of amused smugness in his voice that's undercut by sheer energy.
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He's a good foil for Winstead, but at times it's hard to not see the smugness of Jim Harper seeping into what is otherwise intended to be a blue-collar, Louisiana local boy.
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Over the last few years, and particularly since the Robert Mueller investigation concluded, I have grown accustomed to Trump delivering his insults, launching his attacks and spewing his lies with a swaggering smugness.
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Calling "Idiocracy" a documentary is one of those jokes about Donald Trump that was made constantly in the latter months of 22000 and now reeks of a certain strain of ineffectual liberal smugness.
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She also persisted with smugness and what looked liked forced smiling and failed to offer a message, tag line or breakout line to make people positively think or rethink how they see her campaign.
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In a deft line of questioning, Franken drew out the dangerous smugness of the nominee's judicial philosophy with needling questions about a decision Gorsuch had made in what's known as the "frozen trucker" case.
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And that was BlackBerry, a company that knew it had a lot of assets and advantages, and therefore exhibited a reluctance to embrace change and a consistent smugness about what it had already accomplished.
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It's tone: When the loudest voices on the left talk about people on the right as either beyond the pale or dupes of their betters, it is with an air of barely concealed smugness.
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Reacting to Jeb Bush's comment that Americans would not want "such a hothead with the nuclear codes," Mr. Trump is seen rolling his eyes, raising his eyebrows, mocking surprise, feigning laughter and otherwise exuding smugness.
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If you're still tuning in, it means you're just as trapped as the protagonists, and any smugness we feel is moot because the very fact that we're watching means we still think something could change.
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And really, if you don't want an offseason of Montreal smugness, the last thing you want is the Canadiens winning their division and the Predators missing the playoffs one year after the Shea Weber trade.
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Before that point, the show had a certain smugness when it suggested that the Klingons were just trying to make the Klingon Empire great again, or trying to preserve their racial purity, or what have you.
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For the past couple of seasons, Bran, as the Three-Eyed Raven, has projected an extreme aloofness that bordered on smugness: Look at all these people getting all worked up about stuff that doesn't actually matter.
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His smugness reeked for weeks afterward, the way his chin turned slightly upward to look past me when we danced, while I stewed over being the one who wanted him more, the one who was rejected.
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Already this week, some critics of the concept of inclusive diversity work (racists, men who believe they are inherently superior, etc) were pointing at Smith's comments with an air of smugness — likely not her intended effect.
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But still, the advice to be more mindful often contains a hefty scoop of moralizing smugness, a kind of "moment-shaming" for the distractible, like a stern teacher scolding us for failing to concentrate in class.
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Donald Trump is the embodiment of a raised middle finger at a certain kind of cultural self-satisfaction and smugness coming from the "elites," or "coasts," or whatever else you might want to call, well, us.
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Overnight, the election of Mr. Ford crushed the smugness Canadians have been feeling since their prime minister, Justin Trudeau, appointed a cabinet of 50 percent women and became the envy of enlightened progressives the world over.
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Now think how much tougher it'll become for the typical citizen — not the ones who ride in chauffeured government cars — if New York gets a reputation for the smugness of its politicians and their hostility to business.
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I sense a bit of rise-and-shine smugness from the friend who posts a list of the things she got done before 9 am or even the countless articles on how to become a morning person.
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We found at least five moments in the testimony in which Comey tactfully, without a hint of smugness, either directly or indirectly said that Trump did lie, might have lied, or feared that he would have lied.
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These two terrible tendencies now feed off each other, growing stronger every day: the more smugness, the more satisfying it is to poke holes in it; the more toxic the trolling, the greater the sense of moral superiority.
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The Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily, said Horton had shown a lack of respect to Sun and "cynical smugness" after beating the Chinese swimmer in the men's 400 meters freestyle final.
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Greg Kinnear bolsters his natural smugness with a touch of self-righteousness in the role of Coach Turner; it doesn't help, but again it seems as if no one involved appreciated what made the part work in the original.
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Women in general are expected to hate their bodies with a kind of performative smugness, as if the more loudly they announce their loathing of their thighs and their butts and their bellies, the more feminine they will become.
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But when she talks about her body in this film, there is no trace of smugness, or even her signature confidence (which the media often misconstrues, predictably, as arrogance — but we'll save that problematic racial labeling for another day).
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American historians and social scientists have often observed (with a bit of smugness) that the rough and ready United States was more successful in resisting extremism of the right or left during the 1930s than was much of Europe.
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My politics lean against the kids', and something about their smugness and certainty — they seemed to be doing tomahawk chops and were wearing hats supporting a racist president — confirmed all my priors about the ugliness of our Trumpian times.
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The show's politics informed, shifted, and started national conversations about everything from the core beliefs of Scientology (+221) and Mormonism (+221), to trans rights (+221), "safe spaces" (+221), PC culture (+213), and the smugness that comes from driving a hybrid (+221).
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Ironically, anti-going-out culture, even when it's just as boozy and debaucherous as going-out culture, has spawned a smugness often perpetuated via the very same social media platforms recently used to showcase of impossibly glam nights on the town.
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Others want to assimilate and will do everything to shed their past and fit in: they are the ones who work in a pre-approved style, which includes neo-conceptual appropriation and an aura of intellectual superiority — they often radiate smugness.
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It's a warm, intimate exchange, but it's hard not to notice the glint of smugness in Kai's eye at the opportunity to roast his mother—and adults everywhere by extension—for leaving him a planet with so many environmental problems.
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Her subject is American gun violence, examined through interviews with survivors and historians and set to a score by a precision marching band; though impassioned, it jettisons the artist's keen gaze on systems of power for up-with-people smugness.
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Even the most irreverent versions of this generational self-portrait can never fully evade the smugness they intend to skewer — the implication that their subjects, for all their narcissism, excess and eventual hypocrisy, were ultimately on the winning side of history.
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To the Editor: Although I agree with Gerard Alexander's contention that no political party has automatic claim to intelligence and moral high ground, and that smugness is no way to win elections, it takes more than political differences to divide society.
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The blatant bias on broadcast, the smugness, the self-righteousness that was on full display recently when CNN's Jim Acosta got into a needless spat with the White House aide Stephen Miller, looking more like a Democratic operative than a journalist.
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Over the past couple of years, the tech journalism meter has been pegged all the way over at cynical, knowing smugness, which doesn't do much to invite people in and encourage discussion about the way that technology is built, funded and developed.
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Exciting because degradation is fascinating to follow from the relative safety and smugness of an "appropriate" life, and dispiriting because if all that sad mayhem can happen to this or that character what's to keep it from happening to me or you?
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The smugness of Nick Merril's response, Neera Tanden's immediate jump into the fray to defend her former boss, and the media coverage of the incident remind us all why so many people pulled the lever for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in 2016.
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"There's a lot of apathy and smugness and laziness here on the Republican side that's got to be reversed or there will be a shock to the system at some point," said George Seay, a Dallas businessman and top GOP fundraiser in Texas.
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Surrounded by his yes-men at the Pentagon on August 4, President Obama, with trademark smugness, hammered the media and his political opponents for claiming that his $21625 million cash payment to Iran in January was tied to the simultaneous release of four American hostages.
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I was aware of the smugness, as I was aware of the earbuds I was fitting into my ears, and I knew that all of this — including my ability to speak aloud without fear of ridicule — was what it meant to belong to the mainstream.
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Headley's jabs at suburban smugness are fun ("To us, and people like us" is a favorite Herot Hall toast), and Dana's hallucinatory flashbacks to the desert war are both harrowing and disorienting ("I don't know what real is, I don't know what alive is").
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It's in the earlier works that I see what I'm always gratified to see: technical virtuosity, rule-breaking assertiveness that doesn't succumb to smugness, meaningful story-making, and a consistent willingness to take risks — with Recognize My Sign, I get to have it all.
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Joshua Jackson, best known for television work including "The Affair," is a revelation in the tour de force role of James, ably blending the character's smugness with real charm and a sense that his good intentions are being undermined by ideas he doesn't understand.
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You probably think that I sit there with Giles Coren and Miranda Hart talking about the quality of my track premier write-ups, as we quaff champers and roar with laughter—a self-satisfied trio hopped up on smugness and very, very, very pricey pasta.
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As was typed out with a certain smugness by journalists in the wake of the referendum result, a net inflow of less than 200 migrants landed in Seaton Carew's borough from 2014 to 2015, but an immigration-led campaign led to a Leave vote at 69 percent.
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Initially it reads as slightly puritanical — drunks are bad, fat people are dumb, Jack and Wynn are handsome and good at everything — but this tendency reverses so completely and shockingly at the end that it can almost, but not quite, knock any smugness from a reader.
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It was little more than an aluminum beach ball with a radio transmitter that sent out a regular series of radio beeps, but it expanded the Cold War to outer space, shook up American technological smugness and probably helped John Kennedy get elected president in 1960.
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It is essential, however, to make sure that the good kind of seriousness — steady, good-hearted, good-willed — does not slide back into moral smugness or certainty, and that the fascistic thinking and dogmatism against which we retaliated with irony does not become our own signature.
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Rocked by the discovery that they didn't have to be recluses to reach their goals — and that their smugness about their classmates' presumed futures was totally unmerited — Amy and Molly decide that they're going to go hard on the night before graduation and see what they were missing.
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Woodward has cautioned reporters covering the president in recent months, once telling The Atlantic that the American people "see the smugness" of some in the press and that "following the facts" without injecting feelings and opinions into reporting is one way to help regain the trust of the public.
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So, how do we take the news that Kagame -- on 18 December won, overwhelmingly, a referendum ("I can only accept," he says with the unmistakable smugness of Africa's myriad sit-tight leaders) to lead the country for another term of seven years, in 2017, and then two five-year terms after?
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Gorka's words reflects a certain smugness among right-wing critics, who see in "liberal" Hollywood's tacit acceptance of an accused serial harasser (who donated lavishly to Hillary Clinton, no less) a hypocrisy that invalidates liberals' criticism of Donald Trump, whose propensity for behavior that might be considered sexual assault has been well documented.
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"Free Fire," directed by Ben Wheatley from a script he wrote with Amy Jump, applies a more-is-more ethos to the formula: The ingredients here include a best actress Academy Award winner, Brie Larson; dozens of firearms; and a slew of male characters of varying levels of smugness and idiocy to help out with the shooting.
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Hester La Negrita's "A" isn't stitched onto her clothing, but her illiteracy is a stigma that invites all sorts of figures—a welfare worker, a preacher, and others—to believe that they're superior to this stalwart, poetic woman because they can write their hate, while she can only speak her love, which is like a defiant scrawl across their smugness.
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I have a Google alert for her (as I do for everyone I'm writing about), and each day, that alert goes off and is somewhat filled with pictures of her in a bikini on a yacht but is mostly filled with pus and bile — for her supposed smugness, her jade eggs, her ability to smoke a cigarette without becoming an addict.
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Episode 1 focuses on the emotional and physical torture Lydia puts the handmaids through in order to discourage any more rebellion, although her sadism at the gallows and her smugness as she handcuffs Alma (Nina Kiri) to a burning stovetop underscore how little the handmaids have to lose by fighting back — if it's pain either way, you might as well fight.
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And while I hate to admit it, I also felt a cheap but delicious tingle of smugness, because I now knew that "Neanderthal" wasn't the insult Hurley thought it was — though this, I simultaneously realized, also closed a certain self-reinforcing loop and promoted, in me, the very round-headed elitist glory Hurley was incensed by, thus deepening the divide.
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The idea was that parents could pick up their children's report cards, and then they could take their kids to the book fair as a reward for good grades or an impetus to improve during the next term — so for me, Scholastic Book Fair nostalgia is inextricably associated with smart-kid smugness, parental approval, and the weird milk-and-sweat-and-paper smell of my school library, which was crammed into a corner of the basement next to the cafeteria/gym.
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A post last week in Tablet singled out another pair of Trumpian scapegoats, who should actually be regarded as anything but: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, for supposedly promoting the smug liberal commentary that contributed to polarization: And yet, as Stewart ranted to the camera and reminded Hannity and Co., to raucous cheers, that they "don't own" this country, it was hard not to see how he and Colbert had helped to create the very specific type of internet-era liberal smugness (and, consequently, ignorance) that, though far from the sole cause by any means, has been a significant factor in both the rise of Trump and our current political fracturing.
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AT FIRST I THOUGHT I would write you a story about Jamie's mode of being, since he was someone I recognized from Mapplethorpe's picture as a type — the hustler vamp who hangs back and hangs back until he takes you to a new level to love about withholding — and what impressed me about the image was that it was also a portrait of an attitude that was familiar to me growing up in Jamie's Manhattan, a place where a kind of blind self-satisfaction and smugness based on having a very particular, commodifiable beauty brought a certain spiky envy, longing and pride to whatever kids his age — they were teenagers, and would always be teenagers — who competed to hang out with him on those long evenings, winter or summer, when Jamie was walking in the West Village eating a slice before heading uptown, to his "home," someplace where one or another older guy lived and where Jamie crashed, at least for a time.
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