Word: backlasher
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Carter will also be watching for openings that can lead to a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace. Begin would welcome this?he calls it a "permanent partial peace"?but Sadat has always balked, fearing a backlash from the other Arab states. While U.S. officials doubt that the Egyptian can be coaxed from his position, one Administration staffer advised: "We'll have to see if Sadat's resolve slips...
...since they turn up everywhere: on walkways and city plazas, along bridges and expressways, even in the once hushed corridors of office buildings. America, in short, has become overrun with runners running every which way, including off at the mouth. Not surprisingly, running is now running into a snippy backlash...
Executive Editor Morton Kondracke of the New Republic ventilated his suspicion that the backlash is incited by "a few columnists and freelance writers trying to earn a bit." Yet even he confessed to being put off when a friend learned he was a runner and asked: "Have you experienced euphoria?" No, Kondracke replied. Indeed, he himself admits to complaints "against joggery profiteers"-authors, magazine publishers, dealers in running gear, even some doctors who treat running injuries. Thus, perhaps inadvertently, he joined the backlashers...
This sort of folderol should provoke more belly laughs than backlash. In the real world, the runner does not attract nearly as much popular aggression as, say, the elderly, subway riders, politicians, cops, solitary pedestrian women or even journalists. The reasons are not hard to find. Moving targets offer little appeal to vandals. People who appear to be carrying nothing more negotiable than vigorous health are hardly patsies for muggers. No matter what their charm in repose, few runners going at full grunt offer a vision apt to incite any but the most dedicated molester. Finally, running...
Since True Runners run, as the high priest Sheehan puts it, "not because we feel better but because we don't care how we feel," it is surprising that such spartans have even felt the backlash. Yet the September issue of Runner's World gives over an entire page to an elaborate whine about those who have begun to "dump on running." And the premier October issue of The Runner similarly devotes a whole page to a feature column, "Biting the Backlash." In it, Runner-Writer Colman McCarthy mourns that his fellow treaders "are being knocked, mocked...