Today's word: babbitt

[Fridays Child]

From A.Word.A.Day, at http://wordsmith.org/words/today.html:

babbitt (BAB-it) noun

A self-satisfied narrow-minded person who conforms to conventional ideals of business and material success.

After the main character in Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt.

I don't know about you guys but that sure sounds like a repuke, to me. :shrug:

[sammythecat]

1. Sure does.

Except for one thing, I bet a lot of them wouldn't mind being described that way at all. Rather than "narrow-minded" they like to think they're "strong-willed".

Infuriatingly ignorant is what I call them.

[Fridays Child]

5. And, cocky. If insufferable arrogance could be mined...

...Republicans would become pretty damned valuable. :)

[Duppers]

2. I got that in my inbox last night too

Read to my DH and he said it was a synonym for rethug too. Glad you posted. :)



I like today's quote too:

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are
feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in
such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out
of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

-M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author (1936-2005)

[Fridays Child]

4. Regarding the quote, isn't THAT the truth!

eom

[hootinholler]

3. I thought it was a type of bearing. n/t

[jmowreader]

8. It is.

[Ghost in the Machine]

6. Was Bruce Babbitt a repuke??

Bruce Babbitt:
Man Without Shame

No better case for cynicism about politics is currently available that the career of Bruce Babbitt, Interior Secretary in Clinton time, an era now bodied forth by major green groups in their fundraising material as a time when stewardship of the nation's natural resources can contrast finely with the pillage supposedly ushered in by the Cheney-Bush crowd.

Before leaving the Department of Interior, Babbitt promised that he wouldn't cash in on his years of government service by becoming a high-priced DC lawyer. Then he promptly took a job with Latham and Watkins, a big Washington law firm whose clients include some of the roughest environmental pillagers in the business. Babbitt defended his about-face by saying that he needs to make money to pay off his legal bills stemming from an independent counsel investigation into whether or not he committed perjury when he said did not try to shake down Indian tribes for campaign contributions.

Within days of landing his new job as a counsel in the firm's Environmental Litigation shop, Babbitt could be found at the annual gathering of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the $3 billion lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, cheerleading for the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump, on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada. The Clinton administration opposed the dump, acting more out of a desire to keep Nevada Sen. Harry Reid happy than any sudden seizure of ecological conscience. "It's a safe, solid geologic repository," Babbitt proclaimed, evoking a standing ovation from the massed nukers, something even Dick Cheney had failed to do when he spoke to the NEI earlier that morning.
http://www.counterpunch.org/babbitt2.html

{snip}

Babbitt was elected Attorney General of Arizona. When Governor Wesley Bolin died in office on March 4, 1978, Babbitt succeeded to the governorship. Normally the Arizona Secretary of State would have been next in line to become governor, but Rose Perica Mofford, then serving as Arizona's Secretary of State, had been appointed to the position and not elected, and thus was not eligible to succeed Bolin as governor.<1>

As governor, Babbitt left a significant legacy of environmental accomplishment. He expanded Arizona's state park system and engineered passage of the comprehensive Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980. He also worked to create the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.<1>

Babbitt proved popular as governor and was elected in 1979 and again in 1983. In all, Babbitt served as governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Babbitt

[Fridays Child]

7. Nope.

He wasn't all bad, as public servants go. In some ways, though, he was a small "b" babbitt.