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| arrogance, anyway." - "All right, what about arrogance, what about ego?" - "Not beautiful, not lovable, not nice, not pretty, not cool, not hip, infra dig and non-U. But what fun!" The beauty of pride - easy to despise it, easier still to misunderstand it. The woman with the stunning face and the cold eyes walking icily across an intersection. The cocky young executive trying out his suit in the lobby mirror, turning to flatten the onlooker with an empty stare. The eyes that see you yet do not acknow-ledge being seen by you. The lips twisting in small scorn, in scrupulous disgust. The eyes turning away. The apparent invulnerability. The matador saluting the crowds as they chant his name in the bullring. A bullying lawyer, furious with contempt-uous energy, insulting his way across his office.  | A former Supreme Court justice hurling insults at the television cameras, at the viewers, at us. Don't get near me! A politician dropping an obvious lie and expecting his listeners to swallow it without comment even if they don't believe it - and they do swallow (in fact he does not expect them to believe it or even to pretend to believe it - just not challenge it, as with an advertisement). The beauty of commercials, the immense skill of them. The beauty of the well-wrought lie every word of which is true. The beauty of expert manipulation. There are commercials so good, they make viewers weep, even those of us who curse them through our tears. (The beauty of photographs of the nuclear bomb, of the mushroom cloud billowing higher into the sky on its strange column: like no other explosion, it has a unique profile, grand and  | |||
