Word: tit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...want to look like a man you can do business with," said a Western diplomat in Moscow. "But he also doesn't want to look like a weakling." With grudging admiration for the Soviet leader's tactics, a British official declared, "The way the Russians have played tit for tat demonstrates Gorbachev's skill in making the best...
Chebrikov: Well, I stress I am now only speculating, but we think the American CIA has now started to suspect our disinformation techniques, and they are responding tit for tat. Did you hear what Reagan said "off the record" before his radio broadcast on Saturday: "My fellow Americans. I am pleased to announce I just signed legislation banning Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Can you imagine the field day the arms controllers are going to have. We could well have to go back to Geneva...
...with the Chinese leading as they headed toward the high bar, their strongest apparatus, and the floor exercise. The teams set up side by side at one end of the arena, the Americans on the parallel bars, the Chinese on the high. Their scores flashed seconds apart in a tit-for-tat exchange of steadily mounting tension. Johnson opened with a 9.80 to Li Yuejiu's 9.90. Hartung countered with a 9.90, while the Chinese leveled off, unable to push their scores higher. Finally, Conner topped out with a 10; the U.S. team pulled ahead...
...reason undoubtedly is simple revenge, tit for tat. The U.S. led 36 nations in boycotting the 1980 Olympics, held in Moscow, as a protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Though that pullout was widely dismissed in the West as a futile gesture, it hurt the Soviets' pride more than many Americans ever realized. It also dashed their hopes of putting on a spectacular show that would advertise Soviet athletic and organizational achievements to a television audience around the world. The Kremlin's leaders are widely believed to have been itching to pay Washington back...
...Games will probably outlive this recent tit-for-tat. The Soviet action was not really tit-for-tat anyway; the invasion of Afghanistan is not to be equated with a punitive response to that invasion. Still, as long as excellence requires excellence to test its worth, the Olympics are likely to find some way to continue. It often seems the task, the desire, even the natural calling, of bureaucrats to find a way to damage or curtail individual value. Yet, fortunately, it also seems the nature of excellence to seek its own level. This is the game behind the Games...