{"id":3584,"date":"2019-08-07T18:56:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T18:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/64.156.26.201\/*sergneri.net\/httpdocs\/wordpress\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2019-08-07T18:56:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T18:56:02","slug":"what-p-t-barnum-understood-about-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/08\/07\/what-p-t-barnum-understood-about-america\/","title":{"rendered":"What P. T. Barnum Understood About America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a New Yorker book review, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2019\/08\/05\/what-p-t-barnum-understood-about-america\">\u201cBarnum: An American Life\u201d by Robert Wilson<\/a>. Her review is very interesting in that it brings to the surface the similarities between Barnum and Donald Trump, even if she never actually makes the leap.<\/p>\n<p>Embedded in the review are some fascinating details making it well worth reading, but let&#8217;s look at some of the more obvious similarities:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>Barnum lied easily and often.<\/ul>\n<p>When he was not fabricating, he was exaggerating; he routinely inflated how much he\u2019d spent on his various business ventures. He may or may not have said, \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as bad publicity,\u201d but certainly he believed in this maxim and welcomed any imbroglio that would be noticed by the press. (Many times, he staged controversies for the express purpose of generating coverage.)<\/p>\n<ul>He made a fortune, then lost it.<\/ul>\n<p> While broke, he gave speeches on \u201cthe art of money-getting\u201d; improbably enough, these proved extremely profitable. Toward the end of his life, Barnum toyed with the idea of running for President. His running mate, he suggested, should come from a state like Indiana.<\/p>\n<ul>\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as bad publicity,\u201d<\/ul>\n<p>(Concerning the exhibition of the autopsy of  &#8220;a woman, Joice Heth, who was advertised to be a hundred and sixty-one years old and the former nursemaid of George Washington.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Even by the standards of the time, Barnum\u2019s use of Heth was shameful, a point made by at least one un-bought-off editor. A \u201cmore indecent mode of raising money than by the exhibition of an old woman\u2014black or white\u2014we can hardly imagine,\u201d the Boston Atlas declared.<\/p>\n<p>The New York Sun reported this finding the next day, under the headline \u201cPrecious Humbug Exposed.\u201d To a rival paper, Lyman, presumably with Barnum\u2019s blessing, peddled the fiction that the body on the table had not been Heth\u2019s at all; she was in Connecticut, \u201calive and well.\u201d Several other papers weighed in on the ghoulish dispute, providing Barnum with just the sort of attention he thrived on. \u201cNewspaper and social controversy on the subject (and seldom have vastly more important matters been so largely discussed) served my purpose as \u2018a showman\u2019 by keeping my name before the public,\u201d he crowed.<\/p>\n<ul>Then he went broke.<\/ul>\n<p>After a long run of success with General Tom Thumb &#8230;<br \/>\nAccording to Barnum\u2019s version of events, he was ruined by a perfidious business partner, who tricked him into endorsing half a million dollars\u2019 worth of promissory notes. But Barnum never convincingly explained how the deception worked, and there is some question about whether it ever took place. The business partner maintained that he was the one who\u2019d been duped. And even though Barnum insisted that he\u2019d had no inkling of the impending disaster, he had transferred a number of his assets to associates and to his wife, Charity, months before he declared bankruptcy. \u201cWithout Charity, I\u2019m nothing,\u201d he would joke. (Iranistan, which had been valued at thirty-two thousand dollars, somehow ended up mortgaged for more than three times that much.)<\/p>\n<ul>\nAnd in summary:<\/ul>\n<p>Barnum became one of the most celebrated men in America not despite his bigotry and duplicity, his flimflamming and self-dealing, but because of them. He didn\u2019t so much fool the public as indulge it. This held for Joice Heth and the Fejee mermaid and also for himself; he turned P. T. Barnum into yet another relentlessly promoted exhibit\u2014the Greatest Showman on Earth. Americans, he knew, were drawn to such humbug. Why they are still being drawn to it is a puzzle that, now more than ever, demands our attention. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a New Yorker book review, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us about \u201cBarnum: An American Life\u201d by Robert Wilson. Her review is very interesting in that it brings to the surface the similarities between Barnum and Donald Trump, even if she never actually makes the leap. Embedded in the review are some fascinating details making it &#8230; <span class=\"more\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/08\/07\/what-p-t-barnum-understood-about-america\/\">[Read more&#8230;]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,14,16,17,19],"tags":[567,2096,2095],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sergneri","4":"post-3584","6":"format-standard","7":"category-faits-divers","8":"category-politics","9":"category-racism","10":"category-sea-stories","11":"category-thinking-about","12":"category-trump","13":"post_tag-donald-trump","14":"post_tag-p-t-barnum","15":"post_tag-prince-of-humbugs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3595,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions\/3595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}