self-flattery

Party upstairs thinks that, all things considered, he'd rather have a President who read and liked to read than one who preferred to watch television, the whole question just leads to self-flattery.

Lance Mannion: 2008

Party upstairs thinks that, all things considered, he'd rather have a President who read and liked to read than one who preferred to watch television, the whole question just leads to self-flattery.

A study of Presidential reading habits 2008

There is certainly an element of self-flattery in this.

Matthew Yglesias » One Man’s Pander 2007

Never anything remotely close to condescending or evil, The Reader nevertheless suffers chiefly from a distasteful thematic overemphasis, though not far behind is the film's rather insistent self-flattery.

Review Catch-Up: Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire, Defiance, The Wrestler, The Reader 2009

Never anything remotely close to condescending or evil, The Reader nevertheless suffers chiefly from a distasteful thematic overemphasis, though not far behind is the film's rather insistent self-flattery.

Archive 2009-01-01 2009

Vain self-flattery tells us that we would follow the lead of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela or any of the other models of resistance.

Kenneth C. Davis: America's Willing Torturers 2009

She wouldn't have to be sent on that three-month cruise to resist him -- that's male self-flattery.

Sheila Weller: Mad Hopes for the Mad Men Women 2008

Despite all of the blather about "doing it for my children," he strikes me as someone who never stopped to figure out what he wanted to do if he was elected -- putting aside the usual reasons of ego and self-flattery, just why he wants to be president.

Bob Wright and Jonah Goldberg on the memes about Obama's rhetoric. Ann Althouse 2008

Conceit implies that the self-flattery is excessive or worse yet, imaginary.

Puppy Love Jay 2008

Compassion turns out to be a form of self-flattery.

Presidential Moisture 2008