Europeans like to sneer at American political jamborees as being hopelessly vulgar.

Anyone who runs into such a figure would sneer and mock him.

A person with a naïve but sincere desire to do good threatens that protective shell, and one way to blunt the threat is to sneer.

Populist demagogues in politics and the mass media are doing everything they can to discredit the quality press as propaganda organs for left wing elites who sneer at the views of ordinary Americans.

But we shouldn t allow American politicians who do not even possess passports to write us off with the same patronizing sneer that some Europeans used to reserve for President George W. Bush s administration and policies.

In Israel, the educated Jewish activists who criticize Israeli abuses against Palestinians, the peaceniks who believe that negotiation is better than violence and that even Arabs have rights, are called, with a knowing sneer, beautiful souls.