Word: conning
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...from their President. Any honest talk about sacrifice or yielding self-interest to the common interest is as politically dubious as repeating Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. During the primaries, candidates of both parties who tried cold candor encountered glacial resistance. Reagan has redefined the presidency into a cheerful con game that works best when the man in the Oval Office believes his own upbeat patter...
...much. Then, in fourth grade, boys started to find me attractive, so I put away my boxing gloves." At school Michelle acted up; at home she acted out. "I'd sing into the garden hose and pretend I was Elvis," she recalls. "Whenever I'd try to con my mother, she'd say, 'What a drama queen...
...folklore of capitalism. It neither blandly accepts them nor blithely satirizes them. Bridges' portrayal of Tucker is in the same key. In the largest sense, he is fully, honestly committed to his dream. But there are lovely little moments when we feel his love of hype and con for their own sake, and sense that whatever the outcome of his enterprise, he knows he has already lifted himself to legendary status...
UNFORTUNATELY, it's none of these. For what's most troubling about Character is Sheehy's cynical mindset, namely the assumption that today's candidates are inherently lying, pandering and manipulative bastards, trying to con the living daylights out of those malleable voters. Therefore, this self-serving mindset continues, voters should wise up, ignore what the candidates are saying, and treat what an "enlightened" few in the press say about them as gospel...
...sipped their cafe con leche and bit hungrily into freshly baked Cuban bread spread thick with butter. Wax-lined baskets of bollitos, deep- fried balls of ground black-eyed peas, were passed around. "Eat, eat. No ^ diets allowed here," they coaxed one another in Spanish. Still, their well- spoken English is an accented blend of Southern drawl and Latin staccato...