Word: cons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...connoisseur of the con, Brown has wrapped his knee with a bandage and hobbled with a cane, which brought him $200 in one week. After a brief hospitalization for pancreatitis, he wore his infirmary bracelets like a badge and pulled in $100. Although he professes faith in God, Brown will even cheat the churches: not long ago, he and a buddy collected nearly $75 when they made the rounds of local houses of worship with a former employer's business card and a tale of a job waiting if they could only get bus fare...
...country. Its chief spokesman is New York Mayor Ed Koch, who is urging people to help banish the panhandlers by refusing to give them anything. Koch avers that "many people who panhandle just don't want to work for a living." They are, he insists, addicts, alcoholics and con artists, and those who give them money are easy marks. Sympathetic people would do better to give to established charities, the mayor advises, to ensure that the money be used to help people in need "and not go simply for booze and drugs...
...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...