Synonym a Day

“Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs,” Rush Limbaugh fearlessly proclaimed. You don’t have to advocate heroin addiction or alcoholism to feel that all this moralistic fury is inanely misdirected. Nothing is more fatuous than to indict some performer for his failure to conform to the prescribed virtues of the “role model.” Smug, self-satisfied, sanctimonious, this line of thinking fails first of all to acknowledge the true complexities of human existence. (John Taylor, “Live and Let Die: In Praise of Mickey [Mantle], Jerry, and the Reckless Life,” Esquire, 12/1/1995, p. 120.)