Word: salesmanship
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...White is the bad boy of Blue Collar TV. In this short (41 min.) set, he makes the usual public issues of private parts, honeymoon tiffs and a persistent fan who cornered White and wouldn't shut up ("He raped my ear"). The material is just O.K., but the salesmanship is expert. He's a natural-born charmer with just a soupçon of Satan...
Howard, 36, hasn't lacked for work. In 2005 he appeared in enough films, TV movies and direct-to-video dramas (seven!) to make Catherine Keener seem a slugabed. But as a kid, passed from mother to father to great-grandmother, he learned the hard way about salesmanship. He conned his way into a small part on The Cosby Show by inventing a résumé. An actor has to hustle himself to get into the flow. "It's up to every performer to buy the stage," he says. "And if you've got to pay the first audience...
Such failures offer lessons. Free land alone is not enough. Struggling towns need to attract folks who bring incomes with them or will commute to a larger city for work. And the towns are not above a little salesmanship. So Ellsworth, where Wild Bill Hickock once roamed and locals insist they know more about Wyatt Earp than his biographer does, promotes itself as "the wickedest cow town in the West." Prowers County, Colo., appeals to bird watchers with its 400 species. Atwood, Kans., tells hunters about its bountiful wild turkey, pheasant and deer. Six counties in northwestern North Dakota share...
There is nothing wrong with such a public relations ploy. There was no shortage of salesmanship in the Nixon-Kissinger era, and Gorbachev's own proposals have been largely propaganda. But the trick--which Nixon and Kissinger mastered, and Gorbachev too seems to be learning quickly--is to play for the galleries without jeopardizing what can be achieved at the bargaining table...
...certain quarters, two events in 1987 brought the decade to a symbolic close. Warhol's death in February deprived the scene of its presiding elder, the white-wigged spirit of affectless salesmanship. The collapse of the stock market eight months later gradually squeezed off buyers. By the following August, Basquiat was dead as well. How will the future regard him and his brethren? "Dying young is the easy way out," says Longo. "It's much harder to keep your edge and keep it going." It pays to keep in mind something Zhou Enlai once said. On the bicentennial...