Party and provincial militias, which already rule many of Iraq's streets, could take the law into their hands.With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Bremer might have sold the idea of caucuses if he had managed to persuade the Shia clerics that he was an honest broker (a pity he didn't use the Arabic term "shuras") and if the Bush administration had sought the UN's help a lot sooner.
If his observation of a faded Irish rose in "Strawberry Wine" gets catty ("She's been dead 20 years/ Just look at her hair"), when Mr. Adams mines his own romantic fatigue, his self-pity feels honest.
Something sad, with a lot of self-pity, about an honest, good man whose life and wife had both been cruel to him for no reason.
Her prose is not tinged with clichés or self-pity, but an honest portrayal of coping when life doesn't go the way you planned.
Pity Donald P. Vanderdamp, the blandly honest bowling enthusiast occupying the White House in "Supreme Courtship".
When Shamosh reported back to Ben-Zvi about his failure to retrieve the codex, Ben-Zvi responded, "It's a pity we sent an honest man".
"I pity them, to be honest.
There are some laughs, but not that many, and a weird, nagging undertow of self-pity and resentment of beautiful women making honest guys' lives a misery.
In 2010, they're still at it with the tiresome "Gorillaz are a separate entity guv, honest" business: in next week's NME, Damon Albarn "interviews" Murdoc, for pity's sake.
The result is a "pity party," instead of a "let's be honest about what's really going on here," party.
