The problem is not "too big to fail" so much as "too fucked up to fix".
In a post late Wednesday on the Web site of The Sun-Times, (blogs.suntimes.com/ebert), Mr. Ebert wrote of "At the Movies" that it "didn't fail so much as have its format shot out from beneath it".
In this sense Pakistan is not a failed state so much as the perverse culmination of a more familiar process of privatisation that affects us all.
And as if by fate, Pierce found himself at the center of the biggest play of the game Sunday, Westbrook's fourth-quarter touchdown, and he failed to so much as touch Westbrook as he dashed to the end zone.
For some of us, it has left an enduring mark, a sense that we failed, not so much as journalists, but as human beings, because we saw things we were powerless to stop.
But after Lucas saw JJ Abrams' blockbuster reboot, he was unable to contain his contempt for a film that essentially stole half its plot from his original 1977 movie, failed to so much as mention trade federations or midi-chlorians and featured no scene set in the riveting galactic senate.
Spare a thought for the poor sod - he hasn't been given a sniff and has failed to earn so much as a break point off the Nadal serve.
A huge sonar operation in the 1980s failed to find so much as a fin, and some are now saying that climate change killed her off years ago.
My bangle bracelets, which set off alarms all over Europe, failed to arouse so much as a peep from the metal detector.
And, notwithstanding the many attempts I have made to find it, I have failed to learn so much as its title or the name of its author.
