Word: ramrodded
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Last week retired General William Westmoreland, who ran the massive combat over there more years than anyone, was back on the White House grounds barking out his lament that Ford could not use "tactical air support" and "B52 strikes" and "the mining of Haiphong Harbor." He stood like a ramrod, his chiseled jaw working, his eyes flashing as if he once again heard the distant trumpet, asserting of his old antagonists: "The only language that Hanoi understands is the language of force...
...tour is called "An American Music Show." And it is: on the left side stands the chorus, mostly a black woman who haunts the singing with an urban, Merry-Clayton-in-Gimme-Shelter howl. In the background bobs an electric-haired bass player. On the right stands Vassar Clements, ramrod straight, hair furled and molded back, holding up the fiddle military-high. And in the center Betts, with his plain calico voice and his wondrous guitar, pulling the American Music Show together...
Tactical differences cannot easily be compared: Westmoreland was the crusader sent to win the war; Abrams was the realist sent to help end U.S. involvement in it. Differences in style, however, were clearer. Westmoreland was the stiff, ramrod, ceremonial-looking commander who saw light at the end of the tunnel. Abrams was a blunt, earthy soldier who gave reporters refreshingly frank estimates of the precarious American position and surprised critics of the Army by insisting on the prosecution of six Green Berets who murdered a suspected Vietnamese double agent...
...Jokes. Standing ramrod-straight in a business suit, Gothard lectures with few gestures, fewer jokes, no vocal theatrics and as props, only an easel for sketching and an overhead projector that flashes charts and lists of "Basic Steps" or "Root Problems" on a screen. Yet his hearers sit in rapt attention, jotting in thick red notebooks. Half of the listeners are in their teens or 20s, half are older couples, mostly white Protestant and middle class, eager for packaged help on the woes that afflict modern American families. Thousands are so enthusiastic that they take the course a second time...
...inclined to agree" with complaints that allowing women to eat in the Freshman Union was a "politically expedient decision not in keeping with our usual pure-as-the-driven-snow objectivity." "I am speaking only as a private individual," Bok says, "but if I, as president, can ramrod through a new policy, I, as a private citizen, will do that...