Today, CEO Tim Cook called that suit a "silly sideshow," speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.
In everyday life, it would be silly to speak of a "minus 30 percent chance of rain tomorrow," much less a "square root of minus 1 percent chance".
(It may sound silly to speak of file-sharing in terms of persecution, but when you think of the case of Thomas Drake, or of Bradley Manning, it seems a little less silly).
It is simply silly to speak of Japan "trying... to surrender" for months in 1945, or of Stalin's being in a "no-win" situation in the same year in postwar Europe, cornered into repression by American imperial overreach.
Besides being a handy catchall for the day's top headlines, the Crawl is attractive to news directors in that it enables them to dispense with an occasional trivial item -- information that would seem jarring or silly if spoken aloud in the midst of weighty war events.
The actors speak English with thick Russian accents (with varying success), and when Deema and Meela joke about how hard it is to learn silly phrases — while speaking perfect English, no less — any lingering suspension of disbelief dissipates.
While Ms. Shue grew up to become part of the Shue acting dynasty, it was her role as Ali in "Karate Kid" that had me wearing silly bandannas and speaking in Confucian aphorisms in my teens -- two habits I've never been able to kick.
And despite the insistence by some that we should "just wait until Obama's in office" and shut up and "give Obama a chance," there's nothing disloyal, silly or uninformed about speaking out about those questions and concerns now - because he is already exercising power when making these appointments, and as Frederick Douglass said, "power concedes nothing without demand".
Certainly, his old partner Laurie hopes he will stay silly and has spoken of putting together a sketch show again.
There's probably a point about gender and feminism here, but each time one of these silly names is spoken, the titters fly.
