nothingburger , auch: nothing burger

He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security.

For trial lawyers, "generally speaking it's been a kind of nothingburger," Schulz said.

"If it turns out to be a nothingburger I'll be one of the happiest people in Colorado."

She's a void with swappable wigs, a tasty nothingburger.

Will the GOP's transportation tax hike come back to haunt them, or is it a nothingburger?

Chopra says we need to heed some newfangled, nothingburger Jesus straight out of Acme Spirituality Inc.

Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democratic state chairwoman, said after this month's nothingburger primary that the Democrats "do not need an early primary to stir things up."

If not, well, Saddam and his toxic bugs are plenty scary, but compared with his military might in 1990, "he's a nothingburger," says Charles A. Gabriel Jr., a political analyst for Prudential Securities.

Another theme that's run throughout this season is the difference between the Russians" assumptions about their American rivals and reality, which comes to a head in the Colonel's anti-bombshell: that the Star Wars system that has set everyone's (fake) hair on fire is a nothingburger.

“Unless there are far more egregious examples out there — which I strain to imagine, since the practice and intent of Romenesko’s blog is self-evident — this is a nothingburger,” said James Poniewozik, the television critic for Time magazine, in a comment on Poynter’s site.

(I should add here that the Times may have been overreacting to the McCain campaign's attack on its fairness here: the Ayers story was a nothingburger, but it was placed prominently in the top left hand corner of page one--a position that would seem to indicate that it contained important news, which it didn't.)