Word: nitpicker
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...identify Maine's William Cohen as the son of "a Jewish baker and an Irish mother," implying that a religious identity is one and the same as an identity of national origin. I would not wish to nitpick over a matter of semantics, but this sort of writing could lead to some interesting analogies: Richard M. Nixon, son of a Quaker mother and an American father; Barry Goldwater, son of a Jewish merchant and an American mother; Lyndon B. Johnson, son of a Protestant mother and an American farmer; John Kennedy, son of a Catholic mother and an American...
...Rebozo seems to have conducted his business affairs with consistent vagueness. When asked by the Watergate committee earlier this year whether he had ever been reimbursed for bills that he paid for improvements to the Nixon properties, he replied: "Yes, I say, usually, I'm not going to nitpick with the President. If there's something I think he should have, I might just go ahead and do it without even him knowing about it. He just doesn't concern himself at all with financial problems; never...
...most pleased yesterday to see that for the first time in a long long time someone took the time to state in a dignified and rational way some of the matters concerning the department. I refer, of course, to your THIRD PAGE and "counterpoint." Now I could nitpick about the placement of Professor Turner's article, but that would be senseless...
Your Feb. 9 cover story on Notre Dame was so excellent that I hesitate to nitpick, but the 1913 Notre Dame-Army game in which Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais made football history was played at West Point...
Keeping Time. As usual, to make a show of debate, delegates were allowed to nitpick a few details. Thus a Moscow bank clerk complained that the Ministry of Culture was hoarding quantities of furniture, including 224 clocks. Then delegates unanimously approved both the budget and the 1960 plan. After all, everything was subject to change anyway: last year's plan was changed 37 times, and the chief planner himself was replaced...