Word: charlatanism
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...hold that title with a series of vengeful recollections. Douglas salutes Stanley Kubrick, then recalls that the director was willing to take full credit for the script of a blacklisted writer. John Huston was "one of the most talented men in the industry. But John could also be a charlatan." Henry Fonda was "a wonderful actor, but when I looked at him, I remembered him at that party years ago, snickering with his wife, talking the girl I had brought into dropping me, sneaking out the back door with Jimmy Stewart . . . How cruel of them. And how petty...
...charlatan," says Helms, 66. No, he's a true believer. As patron saint of the not-so-New Right, he is protector of the unborn, champion of prayer in the classroom and pure hell on Communists. "A guy of guts and fire," Republican Senator Alan Simpson calls him. But conservatives too know how prickly he can be. Ask Ronald Reagan. Negotiating arms deals with the Kremlin is one thing; getting them past Helms is something else. Helms is not just committed to causes, he is consumed by them. Consider his fight to ban abortion. "Sure I'm obsessed with...
...even most Democrats actively alarmed over Jackson's prospects are doing little more than grumbling in private. There is, to be sure, something timorous about this palpable reluctance to publicly criticize Jackson. A well- known Democratic insider angrily but anonymously denounced Jackson in an expletive-filled diatribe as a charlatan, "from the phony blood smeared all over him after the King assassination, to his 'Viva Castro' bull, to wrapping his arms around Arafat. And you can be damn sure that all of that will be used against him if he's on the ticket...
Some of these people would have fallen for a shaman, any fool who claimed, say, he could bend spoons with his mind. But Rinpoche was not a charlatan. By all accounts, he was brilliant, he was the real thing. The easiest conclusion to draw, looking from the outside in, is that he was an astute businessman. His devotees ran to the upper middle class, white, with impressive academic credentials. They dressed like Dharma bums in the beginning, but soon the teacher had them shaved, suited and cravated. If they did not exactly turn their pockets inside out for their teacher...
Jerry Stiller, another actor known primarily for comedy, is equally impressive as the loudmouthed charlatan Dr. Tamkin, who dispenses folk wisdom between gulps of pot roast and watermelon. Joseph Wiseman is a bit too pat as the unfeeling father, but there are finely etched cameos from Katherine Borowitz, Tony Roberts, William Hickey and, particularly, Jo Van Fleet as a dowager who defiantly stares down Tommy while her dog urinates at his feet. (Bellow himself appears in a walk-through as a hotel guest...