Word: bantered
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...public platitudes and happy banter inevitably gave way to tougher discussions, particularly with Zhao and Deng (who used his spittoon just once while meeting with Reagan), that touched on areas where the Chinese are disapproving, most notably CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors and U.S. refusal to deal directly with the P.L.O. The talks focused on fundamental policy areas...
...White House sessions, which lasted four hours, touched upon a menu of issues, including French complaints about high exchange rates and the burgeoning U.S. deficit. Despite the language barrier, the two men got along well, exchanging cheerful banter while photographers clicked away. As bulbs flashed, Mitterrand noted wryly to Reagan that "George Washington faced a much quieter life...
...Soviet Union's 176,982 electoral commissions. During the 60-day preparation for the elections, teams of two or three agitatori visit every household, from the fruit farms of Moldavia on the Rumanian border to the Eskimo fishing villages of Kamchatka on the Pacific. Some ward-level political banter takes place during these house calls. Irate voters are likely to grumble, "The hot-water system doesn't work here" or "When are we going to get a bigger apartment?" Since all urban dwellings in the Soviet Union are assigned by the state, the agitatori are targets for this...
Most elected officials maintain an image. New York City's Mayor Ed Koch flaunts a style: confident, snappish, moralistic and salty as a delicatessen waiter's banter. For better or worse, he has come to symbolize the world's one-dimensional view of a New Yorker: an abrasive pavement-pounder who is allergic to trees. Koch obliged this perception after taking over Gracie Mansion in 1977; he kept his small apartment in Greenwich Village as a weekend retreat. He was not being cute; those who have followed the mayor's career should now realize that...
Because our access to a character's mind is limited to summations and tag lines like the above, we are nudged into hearing now often the people in these stories banter dispiritedly and fail to connect--we must listen to what they say, and how they say it. Much of the dialogue is brilliantly mundane: it has the sour sound of conversations that occur in the kitchen over a half-eaten meal...