Language: en
Meaning: (idiomatic)Foodandentertainmentprovidedby thestate, particularly if intended toplacatethepeople.Synonym:bread and games[1873January 11, “English Gossip”, inHarper’s Bazar. A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction, volume VI, number 2, New York, N.Y.:Harper & Brothers,→ISSN,→OCLC,page30, column 4:The government ofWilliam Ewart Gladstonemay not supply the people, as the Roman emperors did, with "bread and circuses," but if giving them plenty to talk about can satisfy a nation, we Britishers ought just now to be very happy. A whole week is never permitted to elapse without some piece of politicalgaucheriebeing enacted for the public amusement.]1877,Amelia B[lanford] Edwards, “Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage”, inA Thousand Miles up the Nile, London:Longmans, Green, & Co.,→OCLC,page35:Take a Mahommedan at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction; [...] but see him in his hours of relaxation, or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fireworks as the height of human felicity. Now swings and fireworks are Arabic forbread and circuses, and our pleb's passion for them is insatiable.2012March 22, Scott Tobias, “The Hunger Games”, inThe A.V. Club[1], archived fromthe originalon4 January 2019:In movie terms, it suggestsPaul VerhoeveninRobocop/Starship Troopersmode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television isbread-and-circusesfor the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.; (by extension)Grandspectaclesstagedorstatementsmade todistractandpacifypeople.1950,Willford I[sbel] King, “The Something-for-nothing Deception”, inThe Right Way to Provide Security against Illness and Old Age,[New York, N.Y.]:Committee for Constitutional Government,→OCLC,page 1:One thing which this study makes evident is that the Welfare State fantasy is usually conjured up by some scheming politician posing as a public benefactor and using "bread and circuses", paid for by the people's own money, to buy the support of the populace.2009April 30,Jonathan Meades, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow:Militant Modernism,Owen Hatherley, Zero Books, 146pp, £9.99 [book review]”, inNew Statesman[2], London: New Statesman Ltd.,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe originalon21 September 2017:But is populism actually popular? Or is it simply sedative patronisation,bread and circusesdevised by a cynical caste of free marketeers who presumptuously underestimate the collective intellect?2019July 10, Henry Deedes, “It felt like seeing the Head Boy debate the class clown”, inDaily Mail[3], London:DMG Media,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe originalon17 July 2019:At one rather telling point,[Jeremy] HuntaccusedBoris [Johnson] of 'peddling optimism' by trying to guarantee we would definitely leave the EU on October 31. Boris'sbread-and-circusesresponse – 'People want a bit of optimism, Jeremy!' – drew wild applause from the 200-odd crowd.
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