Word: askew
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Like many variety shows, Laugh-In features new talent-except that the talent is deliberately askew: a virtuoso on the kazoo, a birdcall impressionist, or an all-thumbs juggler. It was in one such segment, for example, that the show inflicted on a helpless nation that hitherto unknown dingaling, Tiny...
...Facts Askew. Once the Pearson-Anderson book is read by Congress, Pearson will no doubt be called the name regularly applied to him in the course of his career: liar. Often enough, he and Anderson get their facts askew through careless checking or the fear of losing a story. Pearson, for example, claimed that Kennedy's Profiles in Courage was ghostwritten. The Kennedys promptly produced evidence to the contrary. Pearson taunted Secretary of Defense James Forrestal for fleeing in fear when a burglar held up his wife; in fact, Forrestal was elsewhere and unaware of the robbery. Not long...
Warming up, Dirksen waved his arms and pounded his desk. He leaned so close to Assistant Republican Leader Thomas Kuchel that the Californian was practically horizontal at his desk. He shook his head so emphatically that his carefully coiffed mane soon flew askew in a Medusaean tangle of curls. "Our outer defense perimeter started in Korea and went to South Viet Nam," he said. "That is our outside security line. Suppose it fails. It will run from Alaska to Hawaii." Thundered Dirksen, his voice now at full volume: "Let me say that I was not made a Senator to preside...
From the start, the legend was slightly askew. Lindbergh was no Flying Fool. Even at 25, he was probably the best knockabout flyer in the U.S. He was chief pilot (of three) for a tiny airline with a newly awarded contract to fly airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. Four times, lost in fog, he had been forced to ditch his plane and jump for his life. Lindbergh had left the University of Wisconsin midway through his sophomore year to take a course in flying, bought his first plane (for $500) a year later, and qualified as a pilot...
...Britain's political pantheon stands one statue raffishly askew, absurd finger-curls atop a drooping, oversized head, a sardonic smile on its decidedly un-English face. Benjamin Disraeli was as unlikely a Prime Minister as England ever had, as prodigal a son as the mother of parliaments ever spawned. During nearly 40 years of Tory leadership, he was hated with rare passion by his enemies, notably Liberal Leader William Gladstone, and often only barely trusted by his own lieutenants. Intrigued more by power than principle, too cynically clever by half in an age craving sober dignity in its statesmen...