Word: punch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Amin somehow seems more gigantic, more ridiculous and more murderous than any other real-life figure; if he did not exist, a novelist could scarcely invent him. As it happens, Big Daddy has already inspired what amounts to a budding literary subgenre. In Britain, two small satirical paperbacks by Punch Columnist Alan Coren, The Collected Bulletins of President Idi Amin and its sequel, The Further Bulletins etc., have sold 750,000 copies. Within the past year, at least four fictional thrillers (Target Amin, The Killing of Idi Amin, Excellency and Crossfire) and a play (For the West, by Michael Hastings...
Vroom! ... Aargh! ... Eeesh! ... Careening out of a 180° hairpin bend, engine screaming at 6,800 r.p.m. and rear wheels adrift, the smoking blue racing machine slides perilously close to the curve, then barrels into a straightaway. "C'mon now," the driver growls through gritted teeth. "Punch that pedal! Now feather the gas! Hug that curve like your darlin...
...coming to visit and cleaning my car, then straightening my house." He keeps his desk as uncluttered as his sister's car, and moves through the Times building with mild good humor. He places many of his own calls when he is in New York, and when Punch travels on business, it is often in the company plane, which is piloted by a man punningly known as Pontius Pilate. He sometimes writes letters to the editor under a pseudonym, most recently to lament the departure of a brewery from the city by encouraging the mayor to "plant an Anheuser...
...paper under the name of some long-dead relative. Though she retired from the Times board in 1973, Iphigene Sulzberger remains a formidable force in the family. She designed its coat of arms, which features a duck-billed platypus-"an egg-laying mammal that suckles its young," explains Punch-and the motto NOTHING is IMPOSSIBLE. Not for her, anyway. She traveled to China several years ago with a granddaughter and playfully invited Chou En-lai to write for the Times; he declined. The matriarch rarely interferes in Arthur's affairs. "Sons either have an Oedipus complex about their mothers...
...family custom that survives. Punch last year marked a grandnephew's birth with this ditty: O Nicholas Ochs put on his socks to cover his chubby feet. He dropped in the hamper a slightly used Pamper and went out for a walk in the street. O Nicholas Ochs walked blocks and blocks till his socks grew dark and dank. When he came to a stop and sat with a plop at the keys of the Times Data Bank...