In comments to Guardian Australia, Soutphommasane said courts only penalised profound and serious racist comments not "mere slights" and there are defences available that protect free speech.
A starchy old-school gentleman (Ron Bottitta) pops out from time to time to enumerate the elaborate set of fussy rules governing those who believe the merest slight must be repaid by a flesh wound, amputation or agonizing death.
Like others with borderline personality disorder, she had intense and unstable relationships with people that veered from adoration to intense hatred and jealousy the moment she felt the merest slight.
The commemoration of a mere fifth anniversary might seem slight excuse for publishing such a wrap-up were it not for the high degree of public interest in questions that occupied Gould for nearly his entire life.
He was an extremely sensitive man, who suffered much from the merest slights, but was also an extremely dominating, cruel and self-indulgent one, who judged his wives harshly, slapped them when angry and forced them to bear all the known forms of disloyalty.
Metternich, the 19th-century Austrian statesman who famously slighted Italy as a "mere geographical expression", was ambassador of a country that became an empire and then splintered into many pieces within 60 years of his death.
A woman is as "young and slight as a watercolor, a mere gesture of bones and features".
Granted, the increase in unemployment has in fact been slight: the rate has risen by a mere one-tenth of a percentage point this year, to 9.3%.
In contrast, Germany celebrated its lowest unemployment rate in more than two decades — a mere 6.8% — in December, though there's been a slight uptick since then.
If we know him, why does he seem so much slighter than the Barack Obama who thrilled the country a mere four years ago?
