Word: comically
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...death surprised those who knew him. Jackson was fit and industrious, and never smoked. He had no history of heart trouble, and lived prudently. The habit of prudence was bred by his parents, Norwegian immigrants. Nicknamed Scoop after a comic-strip character who appeared in the Everett Herald (which he delivered for years), Jackson practiced frankness young: in the third grade, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he admitted he wanted Warren G.Harding...
Many politicians are natural performers (Glenn is a notable exception), as hungry for audience approval as any Las Vegas comic. "It's a very heady experience when you get people to laugh," says Buchwald. Reagan, of course, spent most of his life performing. There is a humor specialist among the six White House speechwriters, but Reagan is apt to crack his own jokes spontaneously, as he did with mixed success last week...
...antics to get the laugh. The performance is his best since he left Saturday Night because he plays a character--not himself. This is not a Chevy Chase movie, as were his past star vehicles with dwarves and dogs and the like. If Chase lacks a distinctive comic persona, his schlep routine served him well as the cause of his success. But it has also revealed his limitations as an actor. When Chase's characters conform well to his klutzy-but-optimistic comic routine--as with the memorable Gerald Ford satires in the first years of the Not For Prime...
...Comic books, educators agree, have played a distressingly important role in lowering literary standards. Junzo Iwase, president of K.K. Bestsellers, a thriving Tokyo house, gave up publishing novels several years ago. His 100 annual titles range in subject matter from moneymaking to politics, from sports to erotica. Says Iwase: "Our readers are sarariman (salary men) whose favorite topics of conversation are office affairs and professional baseball. We knew there was a tremendous market there." Last year K.K. presented the market with How to Enjoy Baseball Ten Times More by Takenori Emoto, a former professional baseball player ("You feel tempted...
...says. "I haven't left this house in a month." He refuses to attend parties, to undertake book tours or appear on TV interview shows; he is content to let his works sell themselves. They do. His most celebrated book, Kirikirijin (People of Kirikiri), is an 834-page comic novel about an imaginary hill town in northern Japan that secedes from the rest of the nation. More than 850,000 copies have been sold in two years...