Word: straightener
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...example, he starts with a simple entrance, pushing a gouty man's wheel chair. Nothing very funny about that. But as the days wear on, that single chair be comes half a dozen of them, and Chaplin turns himself into a bellboy functioning as a policeman trying to straighten out the splendidly lunatic traffic jam they inevitably create. He then abandons this marvelous scene entirely to turn himself into a spiflicated patient entangling him self in a revolving door, a sequence that turns out to be even more brilliantly timed. Unknown Chaplin offers dozens of examples of this kind...
...convivial and outspoken Stone, 54, is ready to try again, this time as President Reagan's special envoy to the roiling governments of Central America. Stone's daunting new job, says Deane Hinton, the American Ambassador in El Salvador, will be "to wander around Central America and straighten everything out." Although most State Department officials bristled at the President's choice, saying they would have preferred a career diplomat, one defended Stone as a "doer" with the proper credentials: "A great big foot, a thick skin and a great big mouth...
...hugger, a hand-shaker, a back-slapper--body-English--and when something important came up he tore downstairs and interrupted whatever I was doing and said, "You're the only one around here who can straighten this out. You've been in the Far East, not in Washington, among the cookie-pushers...
...Secretary of State Alexander Haig's high-strung relations with the White House. Finally, when Clark replaced Richard Allen as Reagan's National Security Adviser in January of last year, the common reaction in Washington was relief: a bland but efficient mediator had been brought in to straighten out a floundering operation. The staff was demoralized, and Allen was paralyzed by charges that he had improperly accepted gifts from Japanese acquaintances...
...hair (he stopped wearing a toupee in 1980 after it blew off as he greeted President Jimmy Carter at the Miami Airport) is carefully combed. Presiding at a recent House Rules Committee hearing, he leaned back, motioned to an aide and whispered in his ear. The aide rushed to straighten a portrait on a side wall. Pepper nodded his approval...