Word: penchant
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...heard many of the tapes have said that they were appalled by the degrading conversation-talk that they did not expect to hear at a presidential level. "I wish I had not heard it," sighed one listener. Part of the offensiveness lies in Nixon's well-known private penchant for locker room language. What is less well known and more bothersome are the bitter and sometimes savage epithets he aims at individuals who have in some way angered or crossed him, and these highly personal comments include flecks of antiSemitism...
...like the back of his hand. He seems equally at home conversing with Nabokov and Asimov, I.F. Stone and I.B. Singer, Georges Simenon and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Perhaps he is most comfortable with writers like S.J. Perelman (the subject of three separate interviews) and Brigid Brophy, who share his penchant for groan-inducing puns and shameless plays on words. Parelman, Shenker tells us, has a myna bird, "scion of an ancient mynasty,...and wherever Perelman goes the bird is sure to go; it followed him to shul one day." (The bird, incidentally, is christened "Nixon's Vulture...
Chance Pairing. Depression hardship and anemic science grades ended Huntley's early hopes of becoming a doctor, but a rich baritone voice and a penchant for oratory led him to his lifetime work...
...also in bad taste, though it cannot stand comparison to Brooks' most egregious caper, the Springtime for Hitler number in The Producers. But goldarned if it doesn't work. Goldarned if the whole fool enterprise is not worth the attention of any moviegoer with a penchant for what one actor, commenting on another's Gabby Hayes imitation, calls "authentic western gibberish...
Tapping Tuktoyaktuk. Exxon's world intelligence network and penchant for long-range planning have given it a head start in coping with the oil shortage. A decade ago, Monroe J. Rathbone, then chairman, began to get more and more reports that oil use was running increasingly ahead of new discoveries-and that Arabs would one day demand greater control over their resources. He ordered a stepped-up search for oil-even though the world then had a crude glut. In the past decade, Exxon's worldwide reserves have increased more than 9 billion bbl., or 21%. Crews are now searching...