unedifying sight

It was an unedifying sight.

"Truly an unedifying sight," thought Mr. Topper, and yet he was fascinated by it.

We are witnessing the unedifying sight of the pro- and anti-war factions in the Security Council seeking to win over the undecided countries through bullying, bribery and even blackmail.

According to the Middle East International of Feb. 16, delegates were then "treated to the unedifying sight of their party's two most prominent leaders simultaneously screeching conflicting proposals into the loudspeaker system".

The legitimate debate over student debt and the trustworthiness of politicians was eclipsed by the unedifying sight of students and their anarchist allies on the rampage, destroying property and scaring staff in the tower.

Now we have the unedifying sight of Jowells conveniently forgetting about the way the Labour "administration" had begun to cut funding for grass roots support of sport within 6 months of the bid being won.

This is, in Fry's words, the general reader's sense that "poetry lies in inaccessible marshland: no pathways, no signposts, just the skeletons of long-dead poets poking through the bog and the unedifying sight of living ones floundering about in apparent confusion and mutual enmity.

And so, for several weeks in 1857, newspaper readers in the north of England were treated to the unedifying sight of a clutch of Church of England clergyman arguing over whether Britain's greatest female novelist of the day had really been forced to eat "bingy" porridge as a little girl.