Word: sideshow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Circus-minded Robert Kerr of Oklahoma found a niche in his political sideshow for others in the President's Cabinet and aides: "Bull Dog Charlie Wilson and his dog act−energetic bird dogs, howling kennel dogs"; "grinning Jim Hagerty and his most fascinating medicine puppet show"; "NoseDive Benson, the flexible man"; "Give-a-Million McKay, the give-away king"; "hapless Harold Stassen, the dying young man on the flying trapeze"; "the little strongman, Sherman Adams, the one Republican who won't run for Vice President. He declines to stop being President...
...anchorman, John (What's My Line?) Daly, made a virtue out of his chain's relative poverty (less gadgetry, smaller staff) by sticking with the action on the platform while the other webs cast about for sideshow pickups. Daly was the only anchorman who could actually see the convention from his box (the others watched it over monitor screens). ABC highlight: bulldogging Martin Agronsky corralling top delegates for debate, and consistently managing to make sense out of them...
...nation. The planning for next week's Republican Convention seemed to fall off to a whisper. And even the extraordinary White House meeting of the President, the Secretary of State and congressional leaders on the Suez crisis (see Foreign Relations) took on some aspects of a sideshow because the top Democrats sandwiched it in between their caucuses in the Windy City...
...Sideshow Scramble. "How long, O how long," he cried, "shall these Republican outrages endure? How long, O how long will Americans permit the national welfare to be pounced upon at home and gambled abroad? How long, O how long will Republican roustabouts engage in a sideshow scramble for power and privilege?"* He dedicated the Democratic cause to the Greater Glory of God, invoked shades of Woodrow Wilson ("that great humanitarian and idealist") and Franklin Roosevelt ("He sat there in his wheelchair taller than his critics could stand"), called upon Americans to "rise up as one man and smite down those...
What sort of people become carnies? Usually, says Krassowski, carnies are the children or the relatives of carnies. Others achieve the status by accident. In one town a local carpenter challenged a sideshow wrestler to a bout; when he won, he decided to join the carnival for good. In another town a local auto mechanic was called in to help fix a Ferris wheel, and just never left. A college zoologist worked at a carnival one summer, resigned his job at the college, now runs a snake show. A California social worker is now reading palms in a "mitt camp...