Word: teacups
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that a humiliating retreat would inflict on America's reputation would be almost as great as that from the Iranian arms- for-hostages deals. "If the U.S. backs out of this one," says a Western diplomat in the Persian Gulf, "it won't have enough credibility to float a teacup...
...heard this story before. It is Cyrano de Bergerac replanted in rural Washington State. Chivalric C.D. is no swordsman; he duels with tennis racquet and walking stick. Rostand's purple poetry is replaced with C.D.'s Hallmarkian attempt to turn palship into passion: "Why should we sip from a teacup when we can drink from the river...
...these clever and original lines are isolated moments in a movie that recycles the same gags for as long as possible. Lloyd's cigarette falling out of its holder, Mandel romping through the neighbor's newly poured driveway, or Lloyd shivering so forcefully that he drops his teacup are all funny the first time and less funny each succeeding time...
...blind woman with bright glass eyes and small, pinched features and a body as white as his own. Her small shoulders sagged and her neck was long, so that her head seemed to sway above her like a hairy sunflower. He minded the way she filled her teacup one finger over the rim to watch the level, and he minded the way she talked to herself perpetually, going about the house with her lips moving as though she were some kind of old-fashioned priestess forever at her praying, or insane. Also, she whined. But Clumly was not bitter. 'Nobody...
Hearsay can bring psychic benefits to speaker and listener alike. A case in point is the false teacup story about President Nixon, which Kapferer says was spread by the official Chinese press. Instead of challenging the President, so the story goes, authorities arranged to have a performing magician pull the cup out of Nixon's briefcase and replace it with a cheap imitation. Kapferer thinks this rumor offered folk wisdom on how to deal with foreigners. "It showed the essential traits of the image the Chinese have of themselves," he explains, "the final victory of the resourceful Chinese over...