Word: stiff
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American politics and government are particularly vulnerable to Rogers' kind of humor. Politicians who parade as national leaders look silly when you notice their common imperfections. Rogers described Calvin Coolidge's stiff-lipped way of talking: "Coolidge is what we call at home a close chewer and a tight spitter." But he did not limit his jokes to personal failings; he also knocked irresponsible government policies and actions. The moral self-righteousness with which we infuse our policies seems absurd against the hard truths of government inefficiency and immorality. Rogers used this contrast as a major source of his biting...
...cheery admission, Pat Nixon was "loving every minute of it." Indeed, with the President sequestered with his aides and Chinese officials much of the time, the First Lady's own brand of gracious, chatty kitchen diplomacy did much to humanize the formality of the Nixons' journey. Stiff and sequestered herself in years past, she seemed to blossom in her role of the not-so-innocent abroad. Unlike Jackie Kennedy, who tended to upstage J.F.K. in their forays abroad, Pat Nixon has proved herself a master of the very subtle art of being winning and winsome in the role...
Some south-side Regina residents have enough confidence in the system to send three-and four-year-old children (with name and address tags pinned on) on short bus hops to nurseries and day-care centers. Partygoers are enthusiastic about a suggestion that they avoid Regina's stiff drunk-driving penalties by leaving their cars home and taking the Telebus. But the current schedule offers no encouragement to really dedicated drinkers: the last Telebus pickup...
Pony-tailed Teen-Ager Chris Evert became an instant favorite with the gallery when she arrived at the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in Forest Hills, N.Y., five months ago. But many experts doubted that she was ready for the stiff world-class competition she would meet in center court. Unseeded and playing on grass for one of the few times in her brief career, "Little Miss Cool" nonetheless battled her way into the semifinals, winning one gutsy, come-from-behind victory after another. Then, alas, she met Mrs. Billie Jean King, the reigning queen of U.S. tennis. Billie Jean...
...which this kind of satire, or humor, can in deed kill. I think it would be one of the most bloodless means to effect a rad ical change." Oldenburg's response took the form of a vast red lipstick which telescoped up and down, stiff ening and softening, from Caterpillar tracks. It was polemical, a mixture of cosmetic, phallus and rocket carrier - the ultimate weapon. The fate of this work was as appropriate as its original message: removed from the Yale cam pus, it now lies disintegrating in a Connecticut factory yard, along with the Yippies' fantasies...