P.T. Barnum, he of the circus, is a distant memory. And when he is remembered nowadays, it's usually not for founding a circus or even being one of 19th-century America's greatest promoters. Barnum is remembered most for one pithy comment, something he said that reeked of managerial cynicism (see the Enron documentary, "The Smartest Guys in the Room," for an update on managerial cynicism). Still, it has stood the test of time.
Mr. Barnum, when questioned about his success at putting on shows that almost always packed the house, whether they featured bearded ladies, lion tamers or midgets jumping through hoops, observed, "There's a sucker born every minute."
If you couple Barnum's phrase with a biblical injunction, "Vanity, thy name is man," you've pretty much summed up how most folks can be manipulated.
Play to their stupidity and/or their vanity, and you've got 'em.
And oh yeah, don't forget greed.
When I first started covering cops and courts for television news back in Ohio, three decades ago now, I was appalled by the violence I saw first-hand. Murders, car wrecks and brutal assaults were the bread and butter of local television news back in the day, and I saw it all, usually only minutes after the police had arrived on the scene.
After viewing the urban carnage for a year or so, I was no longer able to (and still can't) glorify Jesse James, Al Capone or the Crips and Bloods, despite our culture's penchant for be-moaning our violent society and then paying good money to see it heroized in film and on the printed page.
But I was introduced to a vanishing breed of criminal that fascinated me: the con man.
You always see these stories where some elderly miss or mister "gave" $5,000 to some guy who just showed up at their door promising to double their money.
I covered a couple of these deals back in Cincinnati. In both cases the retirees whose bank books were picked thought they were going to profit immensely (and somewhat illicitly) from the con man's scheme. I found myself rooting for these marginal criminals who did their deeds without the slightest hint of menace or physical threat.
And if their victims weren't senile, I found myself blaming their stupid greed, not the criminal's cunning, and thinking five years in prison for the con man and sympathy for the "victim" was blatantly unfair.
At the least, I thought, the connee should join the conner for a period of their incarceration since those who lost their funds were trying to get something for nothing.
The old-fashioned con man and con woman lived on their fellow man's greed and stupidity, and in the case of the con woman, their fellow man's secret little lusts.
I thought of all this the other day when staring a mistaken attempt to prey on my vanity - my desire to look good in front of my fellows - in the face.
It all started when I opened my mailbox.
I discovered a form letter from one Matthew Proman, the chairman of an outfit located on Franklin Avenue in the Big Apple itself, New York, N.Y. Matthew could barely contain his gushing enthusiasm as he informed me, via the magic of a copied form letter with my name, correctly spelled above the body of the missive, that I had been "recently appointed" as a "biographical candidate" for inclusion in the upcoming 2005-06 "Honors Edition" of the Manchester Who's Who Among Executives and Professionals (capitals all Matthew's).
Matt was "pleased" to inform me that on April 28 my "candidacy" was approved.
This is a little odd since I never realized I was running for inclusion into the Who's Who.
I did briefly consider running a shoestring campaign against Fat Greg for mayor of Seattle, since I could state emphatically that I wasn't in Paul Allen's hip pocket and hadn't been publicly kissing said billion-aire's nether regions for years now.
But friends well placed in the city's power structure were pleased to inform me that without money I wouldn't be taken seriously, and my campaign would resemble that of the guy who knows who killed Kurt Cobain and runs for mayor each election season. So Paul will have to lose his next billion without me.
Alas, Who's Who is gonna have to survive without me, too.
Their timing is bad.
Despite Matt's assurances that I was chosen after information about me was obtained "from researched and professional listings," my career, such as it is, is in a down phase.
In 1999 and 2000 I was the editor of a decent weekly newspaper and was seeing a lovely middle-class girl.
In 2005, I am columnizing for this paper and one in Port Orchard. To make ends meet, I am also working for a market research firm that calls people up and asks them what restaurant they eat at, and have they ever tried to quit smoking.
I've had four dates with three women in all of 2005.
I sold my car in Hawaii three years ago and am riding the bus.
I did miss a hole-in-one on the eighth hole of Interbay Family Golf Center by 18 inches last week, but then I double-bogied the par-three ninth after burying my ball deeper into a sand trap than I've managed to bury my journalism career over the past couple of years.
If I belong in any Who's Who right now, then Fat Greg deserves another four years, George W. Bush deserves a presidential comic-book library and Bill Clinton should be named principal of a chubby girls' junior college.
No, I am forced to face the fact that Matthew and the Manchester boys and girls are trying to play (or prey) on my vanity when they ask me to join "thousands of accomplished individuals" in the Manchester Who's Who registry.
Matt didn't ask for money in his first missive, so there is a slight chance that the Manchester folks are just misinformed about my level of worldly success over the past couple of years. But I've read my Barnum and my Bible, so Manchester and its Who's Who can deal around me.
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