Word: verbalizations
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Verbal Fencing. It was in Denver's Federal Building that President Nixon committed the startling gaffe of prejudging the case of Charles Manson. While complaining that the press had made Manson a glamorous hero, Nixon said: "Here was a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason." For a lawyer who occasionally delivers homilies on legal propriety, this was a serious breach...
...damage was already done. It was not until half an hour after Nixon spoke that Press Secretary Ron Ziegler reappeared before the newsmen. After some minutes of verbal fencing, Ziegler agreed that Nixon's words about Manson should be retracted. When Ziegler told Nixon what had happened, the President was surprised: "I said 'charged,' " he replied. During the 3½-hour flight back to Washington, Mitchell persuaded Nixon to put out a statement backing Ziegler up. It read in part: "The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person in any circumstances...
Jumping Jack. The affected children, estimated to number as many as 3,000,000 under 15 in the U.S. today, are not mentally retarded. Most are about average or above in IQ ratings, usually high on verbal skills but lower on muscular coordination tests. It is their achievement quotients that are distressingly low. As many as 70% of the victims are boys; no one knows why. While the children do not all exhibit all the same symptoms, the jumping-jack hyperkinesis is present in at least 80%. Almost invariably there is a passion for handling things, often clumsily so that...
...become a noisome country" in a recent speech. Moynihan confessed in his letter to the paper that "after hasty consultation with Webster's Second Edition," he had tried-unsuccessfully-to swing a deal with a reporter to have the word rendered as "querulous." Then he concluded with a verbal flourish: "Thus does truth subvert semantics...
Through all of this lush verbal growth, doubt comes creeping toward the reader. What Pifer is up to is no mere suspense story. Somewhat in the manner of Richard Condon, he intends a demolishing burlesque of the big-buck sector of U.S. society. Some of his touches are good. He knows, for instance, the precise frequencies at which high-salaried underlings twitch in the presence of heavy money. He can show two flacks of opposed allegiance snicking at each other with unsheathed falsehoods, and trace the exact grimace of the loser...