Word: gist
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Detailed Memo. The gist of the call was relayed to Hoyt, who found the hospital adamant in refusing to discuss the matter-but the refusal was couched in terms indicating the information was true. Hoyt also heard of other Eagleton hospitalizations for "gastrointestinal" problems and "sudden weight loss." He thought the evidence strong enough to warrant a detailed memo to Robert Boyd, Knight's Washington bureau chief. The two arranged to meet at Rapid City, S. Dak., and discuss whether to approach McGovern's staff...
...weeks ago Syrian President Hafez Assad stopped off in Cairo on his way home from the Soviet Union. His relations with Moscow have become more genial as the Russians have stepped up their cultivation of Mideast allies other than Egypt. The gist of Assad's message from the Russians was: no offensive weapons for Egypt. That was grim news for Sadat, who had been facing growing pressures at home...
That is the gist of a warmly appealing play by David Wiltse. His hero, Suggs (William Atherton), is a Kansan Candide. One of his ideas of what makes New York City the best of all possible worlds is sex. A series of girls (all played by Lee Lawson) parades through his bachelor flat, but a sense of repetitious futility makes him marry a girl (also Lawson) for whom he has no sexual appetite...
That is the gist of Goffman's newest book, Relations in Public (Basic Books; $7.95). Its subject is microsociology, or group behavior on a small scale-as when people pass each other on the street or wait together at supermarket checkout counters. Such encounters, says Goffman, frequently consist of rituals: either "supportive interchanges" like "Hello" or "remedial interchanges" like "Excuse me." In each case, one person provides "a sign of connectedness to another," while the other shows "that the message has been received, that the affirmed relationship actually exists as the performer implies, that the performer has worth...
...Nixon believes that the law should punish pot smokers. Thus it has been widely assumed that because nine of its 13 members* are Nixon appointees, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse would rubber-stamp Administration views when it made, its recommendations to Congress. Last week, when the gist of the group's still unpublished report leaked out a month early, the skeptics were amazed. After a year of study, the commission has decided that criminal penalties for possession and for private use of marijuana should be entirely abolished...