Word: ployes
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Friends and admirers of British Humorist Stephen Potter, who died in London last week at 69, will recognize Lifeman's rejoinder as the Canterbury Block, a devastating all-purpose ploy. "Yes, but not in the South," as Potter went on to explain in Some Notes on Lifemanship, is a phrase that "with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person. It is an impossible comment to answer." Lifemanship can take many other directions. One gifted practitioner, cited by Potter in the same volume, dedicated his book "TO PHYLLIS, in the hope that...
...Annoying Ploy. British humor can be highly perishable, and its point is often so obscure as to defy detection -except perhaps, by the British themselves. But Stephen Potter's wry and understated advice on how to win games, including the game of life, with losing hands endeared him to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Any of his satirical books, from the first (Gamesmanship, or The Art of Winning Games
...intensely annoying ploy often used by doctors," Potter wrote, "is to treat Patient as if he were as ignorant of all anatomical knowledge as a child of four." He will, for example, "refer to the blood corpuscles as 'the white fellows and the red chaps,' " and will inquire of a constipated lady patient: "How are the bow-wows this morning?" An effective way to reduce such nonsense before it starts, Potter advised, is to cast doubt on the doctor's professionalism: "I am, I suppose, right in calling you Doctor...
...adopting its hard line, the Administration lent credence to those who charge that Haynsworth is the unhappy end result of Nixon's "Southern strategy," a political ploy the President has repeatedly denied. According to this theory, Nixon met with South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond and other Southern leaders in Atlanta in May of last year. The Southerners promised Nixon two things. First, they would protect Southern delegates for Nixon in the convention against the poaching of California's Governor Ronald Reagan. Second, they would do their best to hold the line in the general election against...
Whether or not Pompidou's ploy works, it was plain that the unequal distribution of wealth in France-and elsewhere-was one of the root causes of the current unrest. Said Political Commentator Jean Ferniot: "The war has moved from the political to the social battlefield." And, as in beleaguered Britain, nobody can be sure where the next skirmish might break...