self-regard

Maybe I’m just hardwired to say this as a Gen X-er, but it’s been exasperating to see that optimism harden among some boomers into a kind of deluded self-regard.

New Yorkers have had to endure Trump's “personal brand,” comprising equal parts of privilege, bull***t and exploitation — all of it wrapped in hugely inflated self-regard, masking pathological insecurity — for half a lifetime now.

His narrator, Richard, is the least shiny of a golden foursome whose youth, beauty and careless wealth allow them to levitate somewhere over Sydney Harbor, happily encased in the champagne bubble of their bottomless self-regard.

Reaching back to his Gabe Lewis character in “The Office,” he puts the anger, condescension and self-regard right on the surface, and he swerves effortlessly between pompous confidence and sweaty panic.

Snippets are enough to really get a sense of the high self-regard McCarthy has for himself, which is in direct contrast to how everyone else sees him.