Word: toadding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...caucuses were built into kind of a glitzy new service industry designed to bring in the city sharpies with all their money. In February, Iowa has a surplus of snow, gray skies and idle hours. Only money and pool halls are in demand. This year the fellows at Toad's said that none of them got a single dollar of the $10 million lured into the state. Most of the money went to television stations, hotels and car-rental agencies, an alarming number of which are owned by people back East-slickered again...
Outsiders were always more hyped about politics than the gang at Toad's. The surprising success of the Iowa State University basketball team (14-9 this very moment) and the equally surprising defeats of the University of Iowa (10-13) have been topic No. 1. There's been a little Olympic palaver, and when the battleship New Jersey opened up on Lebanon, that was a priority conversation...
There was a chuckle or two at Toad's last summer when Walter Mondale showed up on a beastly hot day to commemorate former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who was born down the road. Everybody was sweating but Mondale seemed to be sweating the most. The consensus at Toad's was that Mondale took fright at the possibility of being linked to the leftist politics of Wallace, who when dropped by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 went off and formed a radical third party. The ceremony decorously dwelled on Wallace's contributions...
...that's another thing. The Democratic powers at Toad's declared one morning: "No more kinfolks. If the candidates themselves don't come, they can forget it." Ethel Kennedy and her son Joe were good crowd builders back in 1980 when they were working for Teddy. Greenfielders have got blasé. They didn't turn out for Glenn's daughter, Cranston's son or Hart's wife...
...prospect of seeing a real live network anchor on Iowa soil all that great. One of the boys at Toad's slipped in the ultimate putdown: "Watching an anchorman is like watching an astronaut in orbit: they are both weightless...