Word: penchants
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...convention (Philadelphia, 1787), divided against itself at another (Montgomery, Ala., 1861), reunited at a rather intimate one (Appomattox Courthouse, 1865) and renewed quadriennially. Long before Sinclair Lewis chronicled the fictional convention high jinks of George F. Babbitt, boobus Americanus and prototypical conventioneer, other observers dis covered our penchant for gatherings. "As soon as several Americans have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce before the world, they seek each other out, and when found, they unite," observed Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. Editorialized the Nation in 1865: "If the Englishman can initiate no public enterprise without...
Mead had a penchant for looking at an institution, be it childbirth or birth control, from a new and different angle, applying new concepts and precepts gleaned from a life of continuous observation. Because she was far more willing and even anxious to experiment than most of her more conservative co-workers, many of them criticized...
Maverick Economist Alfred Kahn has a penchant for candor that is both refreshing and dangerous in Washington. When he said that there is the possibility of a "deep, deep depression" if inflation continues to soar, the President was furious. Kahn responded by purging the word depression from his vocabulary and instead using "banana." So he now says: "We're in danger of having the worst banana in 45 years...
THUS THE LOYALTY test assumes for Jones an almost ritual importance. It is a way of keeping absolutist beliefs absolute. It is not the first the time Americans have heard of loyalty tests: McCarthy once advocated them. In both men it is the old Puritan penchant for the absolute truth surviving deformed through history, breeding paranoia and, in Jonestown, total tragedy...
Such pressures have given Donna an ulcer and a penchant for philosophy. "The furor over Love to Love You Baby was certainly good for my bank account," she remarks, "but it gave me a one-sided image as a sex queen. But a person is not one thing." One person Donna would like to resemble is Diana Ross. "I've always admired her," says Donna. "Since I was a young girl Ross has been working her behind off, getting her credits and paying her dues. She has been through a lot and attained a great level." And of course Donna...