Word: peoria
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...Peoria's pick...
Ever since he first went to Congress 26 years ago, Republican Congressman Robert Michel has played well in Peoria, the largest town in his 18th Congressional District in central Illinois. Now Peoria seems to be having its doubts. Long a pocket of prosperity in America's heartland, the region is reeling from depressed farm prices and 16% unemployment. The Pabst brewery and the Hiram Walker distillery have left town, and giant Caterpillar Tractor alone has laid off 8,000 workers. So Michel, 59, the House minority leader and President Reagan's high-profile point man on Capitol Hill...
...leader, while admittedly the source of some political trouble for him now, will prove an advantage to his constituency in the long run, especially when the recession ends. He says he is "tickled to death" about Reagan's scheduled appearance this week at a campaign gala at the Peoria Civic Center, also featuring Charlton Heston and Pat Boone. Scoffed an aide to Stephens, on whose behalf such Democrats as Walter Mondale and John Glenn have made campaign appearances: "They must be running scared if they have to bring in the Gipper, Moses and Mr. Clean all together." But while...
...long ago President Reagan remarked, "I know that what we've been doing doesn't read well in the Washington Post or the New York Times, but, believe me, it reads well in Peoria." Like most of Reagan's hand-carved one-liners (which is about all we get these days), this remark was ambiguously simple. It seems a criticism of two papers unpopular with right-wingers, but in Reagan fashion it was a bite without a sting. The remark could also be read, suggests David R. Gergen, the White House's director of communications...
...fact, Pryor was playing in Peoria-on the streets of that central Illinois city-from the time he was born there in 1940. Like many other comedians, Richie was the little kid with the big sassy mouth in a tough neighborhood. Pryor has minted much comic revenue from images of his youth: the whorehouse his grandmother ran, his father's satyric appetite, his own early awakening to the pleasures of the flesh, the sniper fire of racism. Some of this currency is counterfeit (his family, as he says in Sunset Strip, was not poor), but all is dross...