Word: oneupmanship
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...Oneupmanship? Before the era of the time clock, delaying tactics were so common that in 1851 British Historian Henry Buckle wrote two chapters of his History of Civilization in England while waiting for his opponent to make a move. During a match with World Champion Emanuel Lasker (1894-1921), Steinitz slurped a glass of lemonade so noisily that Lasker moved to a separate table. Some of Lasker's victims claimed in turn that the champion stunned them with his foul-smelling cigars. World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik( 1948-57,1958-60, 1961-63) used to train for a match by having...
...excitement, and precious little for a white, middle-class audience to identify with. Just two blacks, father and son, running a junk shop in Los Angeles and playing a continual, if affectionate game of oneupmanship. Yet NBC's Sanford and Son, which premiered in January, is already one of TV's top ten shows. With so much seemingly going against it, what does Sanford have going for it? Above all, it has Redd Foxx...
Lockheed showed off its first giant L-1011 "airbus," which gleamed under the hangar lights like a winged dolphin. While company officials sat proudly by, Governor Ronald Reagan called the new plane "one of the most sophisticated commercial jetliners ever produced." Several days later, in a neat bit of oneupmanship, McDonnell Douglas brought in Vice President Spiro Agnew to speak at the roll-out of its new airbus, the DC-10. Large enough to accommodate 270 passengers, the new planes are intended to displace the 747 on many medium-range hauls...
...dour-visaged vaudeville comedian who wisecracked his way to fame on radio's Can You Top This show in the '40s; of cancer; in Greenport, N.Y. In 1940 Ford teamed with Comedians Harry Hershfield and Joe Laurie Jr. to challenge radio audiences to a game of comic oneupmanship; at its peak the show attracted 10,000 jokes a week from a regular audience of 10 million listeners. Typical Ford rib-tickler: "Professor to student: 'Give me a definition of syntax.' Student to professor: 'My God, have they got a tax on that...
Burning Butts. In Athens, the Greek military junta was busily playing oneupmanship with its critics: in order to forestall token strikes threatened for May Day, the junta declared it a public holiday. It also sponsored a workers' rally in Salonika, complete with government-approved signs calling for a 40-hour week and "profits participation...