Peter

None of the adulation, though, quieted a deep insecurity that Nicholas Gage, author of Greek Fire, a new biography of Callas and Onassis, says began with an unstable mother who alternately criticized Callas and cadged money from her. A fed-up Callas finally told her mother to get a job or, failing that, “jump out of the window or drown yourself,” TIME once reported. (Christina Cheakalos, Auction: Diva’s Delight, People, 12/4/2000, p. 131.)…

[This term often refers to religious irreverence or disrespect, as in the first example, but can also refer to irreverence or disrespect generally, as in the second example.]_

Jewish impiety, unlike the impiety of other non-Christians, was understood by John Chrysostom and those who thought as he did to be not just mere impiety, born of ignorance or the inability to recognize the true path, but a sort of madness. (Daniel Goldhagen. Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Knopf [1996], p. 51.)

[The Tampa Bay Rays] deny their gut feelings and trust numbers before individuals, which is why you see impious evens like the ALCS Game 7, when Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash yanked starter Charlie Morton with a two-hit shutout after only 66 pitches. (Jason Gay, “The Rays Win Ugly. Don’t Hate Them,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/23/20.)…

In October, The Washington Post … tried to explain why the belief is widely held in black neighborhoods that the CIA was behind the crack epidemic in the inner city of Los Angeles. “Conspiracy theories can often ring true; history feeds blacks’ mistrust,” read the Post’s headline. This apologia for African American credulity ran alongside a story that proved that the allegation about the CIA and crack was utterly unfounded. (Jeffrey Rosen, The Bloods and the Crips: O.J. Simpson, Critical Race Theory, the Law, and the Triumph of Color in America, The New Republic, 12/9/1996, p. 27.)

In his preface, Alter promises to advance a revisionist brief for Carter’s presidency. And he has some persuasive evidence [regarding Carter’s accomplishments.] But the book is no apologia. It exposes Carter’s weaknesses as well as his undervalued strengths.  (David Greenberg, “The Feats and Failures of Jimmy Carter,” The New York Times, 11/1/2020.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for rationale, excuse, defense or explanation.…

By their formidable intellect and persuasiveness as well as their personal charm, Rehnquist and Scalia stand at least a chance of making the [Supreme Court] more cohesive and coherent. Their judicial opinions will be more sprightly and readable than the turgid fare churned out by most of their brethren. (Evan Thomas, Reagan’s Mr. Right — Rehnquist is Picked for the Court’s Top Job, Time, 06/30/1986, p. 24.)

I read Hugh Trevor-Roper’s demolition of Arnold Toynbee’s ten-volume Study of History, in a 1957 essay … with a feeling of immense relief and gratitude, knowing that I would never have to slog my way through those turgid books. (Joseph Epstein, “Essays in Biography”, Axios (2019), p. 367.)

This word can also be a synonym for pretentious, ostentatious or bombastic.…

[This word, from the Greek for navel-gazing, is sometimes used in a pejorative sense to mean excessive focus on oneself or self-indulgent introspection. The second example given is an instance of this sense of the word.]

The point [of Paul Goodman’s philosophy], as near as I can make it out, is to achieve a kind of perpetual omphaloskepsis, repeatedly examining yourself and your motives and connections with the world around, and thus achieving health, or at least avoiding neurosis, by putting forth, as much and continuously as possible, the authentic self. (Talk about the examined life!). (Kirkpatrick Sale, Crazy Hope and Finite Experience: Final Essays of Paul Goodman [book reviews], Nation, 4/10/1995.)

The alternative [to the relative lack of horror in America to the recent terrorist attacks in the U.K.] is that a dedicated group of [Islamic] killers will react to the blasé omphaloskepsis of the West by doing something so horrible that we will be shocked out of our torpor. (Jonah Goldberg, “After the London Attacks,” The New York Times, 6/6/2017.)…