Word: joking
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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DURING the campaign it was obvious enough, and the standard joke of reporters covering Nixon crowds was: "Five dollars for the first Negro." In November it was even clearer; fewer than 15% of the nation's black voters cast their ballots for the Republican ticket. It is doubtful that the figure would be much higher today...
...first it was a joke, and Los Angeles Police Chief Thomas Reddin found it as funny as anyone else. Wouldn't Reddin, someone had laughingly suggested, be an ideal TV newscaster for station KTLA, which recently lost its veteran anchorman? Jest or not, the idea made increasing sense to the station, controlled by Gene Autry, and to the chief himself. Last week Reddin announced he would retire after 28 years on the force to become KTLA's chief commentator...
Would such a man make a good President? Sheed thinks yes, but he is not certain. "The habit of frivolity is tyrannical, wants to make a joke of everything. With McCarthy . . . when it lapsed, a very deep melancholy seemed to take over." In the end, claims Sheed, McCarthy "underestimated himself sinfully. And he was, I believe, after the first shock, delighted to be free of his role, to escape from his Secret Service man and return to that niche a little below...
...compliments to the chef who dreams up the dehydrated and otherwise denaturalized chow that they take along in space. So it came as quite a surprise last Christmas Day when Apollo 8's Jim Lovell suddenly began radioing lavish thanks for his dinner. It was all a private joke, Command Pilot Frank Borman explained last week. What Lovell was giving thanks for were three 1-oz. bottles of brandy that had been smuggled aboard for the boys. Sad to say, Borman vetoed the libation, and it was locked up for the duration of the flight...
Naturally, the vast majority of Californians are treating the doomsday talk as a huge, macabre joke, but the fears of the gloomy visionaries are not entirely without justification. Seismologists say that California has been long overdue for a major earthquake, although a fissure that would split the state in two along the length of the 600-mile San Andreas fault is in their opinion inconceivable. Nor, they add, can anyone predict the time, place or magnitude of the quake with absolute certitude. In fact, one of the quake dates predicted by soothsayers, April 4, passed last week without a tremor...