Word: peculiarities
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Eclipsed by all these trivial pursuits was one of the peculiar and charming aspects of this presidency: Bush's relentless spontaneity. Bush is known for picking up the phone and calling foreign leaders, old friends in Texas, lowly bureaucrats in obscure agencies, to find out more about problems and policies. He likes to wander down to the office of his National Security Affairs adviser Brent Scowcroft to discuss the latest developments overseas. Sometimes, without a word to his wife, he'll invite visitors to lunch or dinner or even a sleep-over in the Lincoln Bedroom...
Television is one of those peculiar institutions (professional sports is another) where the underlings often wield more clout than their bosses. The faces onscreen, after all, are what count for the audience, not the faceless executives who ostensibly hire and fire them. David Burke, president of CBS News, found that out the hard way, when he suspended 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney last month for allegedly making offensive remarks about blacks and homosexuals. The uproar over the suspension was instant and unrelenting. Thousands of complaints from viewers poured in to CBS. Press critics chided the network for trampling on Rooney...
...fears that his re-election will be more difficult if the public wearies of his visage in the first few years. "People get tired of seeing anybody on television," says a senior White House aide. So Bush stays on the margins of public consciousness, betting that in today's peculiar politics, as in romance, absence makes the heart grow fonder...
...here is that the truths of physics are independent of which book you learn them from. However, some books emphasize and illuminate some topics better than others. Once, half-way through the semester, the professor accidently wrote a formula on the board in a notation that I recognized as peculiar to a certain textbook...
...keep and bear arms is fundamental to our concept of democracy. No high-court decision has yet found grounds to challenge this basic freedom. Yet some who oppose this freedom want to waive the constitutionality of the "gun control" question for the sake of their particular -- and sometimes peculiar -- brand of social reform...