Word: torching
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When Brokaw takes up his expanded duties, a new, younger generation of anchormen will mostly be in place at all three networks. Says Today show Executive Producer Steve Friedman: "It is time for the Rathers, the Brokaws, the Koppels to take the torch. Brokaw and Mudd are going to be the Huntley and Brinkley of the '80s." But CBS News President Bill Leonard cautions that after the wooing is over, friction can develop: "It's always more complicated when people get married. There's potential for a marvelous marriage-and for all kinds of trouble...
...high. "You're wired up like a mad dog," says Mary, "and your body's been running at 150 miles an hour for days." One night, after freebasing in the rear of her van, they took some Quaaludes and passed out, leaving an unlit propane torch with its nozzle open-creating a risk that a stray spark could ignite the propane and blow...
...lepers and breathing voltage into numb forms, we find that he's not quite what we were looking for. Instead, we must relegate him to the narrow ranks of the "solid" young performers who, while they are not yet the transcendent pace-setters, at least don't drop the torch. Pathetically, even this compromise is good news for the American short story...
...years; yet we suddenly seem old from responsibility. Just 20 years ago, Poet Robert Frost came to town to recite at John Kennedy's Inauguration: "Such as we were we gave ourselves outright/ . . . To the land vaguely realizing westward,/ But still unstoried, artless, un-enhanced." Kennedy answered: "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." Ike huddled in his coat, white scarf up around his neck on that day. When the Inaugural was over, the defeated Richard Nixon slipped down the Senate steps of the Capitol front and disappeared into the dark back seat...
...just as surely as the burning of books dramatizes a yearning latent in every consecrated censor. The time could not be better for recalling something Henry Seidel Canby wrote after Big Bill Thompson put Arthur Schlesinger to the flame. Said Canby: "There will always be a mob with a torch ready when someone cries, 'Burn those books!' " The real bottom line is: How many more times is he going to be proved right...