Word: maximalism
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...when Seann William Scott quit his gig stocking shelves at Home Depot to audition for the 10-line part of Steve Stifler in 1999's teen-sex comedy American Pie, he unwittingly invented the icon of the Generation Y frat boy, the Eustace Tilly of the Maxim set. Scott's Stifler, who returns this Friday in the Pie franchise's third installment, American Wedding, is a rich kid dedicated to humiliating those who appear to be his friends. In the first film, he slipped a laxative to a public bathroom--averse buddy at school. He is also...
...hopes the serious Scott can break through. "I know people will say it's Stifler and the wrestler," he says. But he's O.K. with that. It turns out, he says, that more women walk up to him interested in Stifler than angry at him for the character. Those Maxim dudes know what they're talking about...
...during the Revolution, Franklin proved himself a master of the diplomatic doctrine of realism by playing an adroit balance-of-power game between France, Spain, the Netherlands and later Britain. In a memo he wrote to the wily French Foreign Minister Vergennes, whose realist outlook was summarized by his maxim that "the influence of every power is measured by the opinion one has of its intrinsic force," Franklin emphasized the cold calculation of national interests that he knew the minister would appreciate. If France and her ally Spain joined the American cause, Britain would lose her colonies and the "commerce...
Poor Richard's delightful annual prefaces never, alas, became as famous as the maxims and sayings that Franklin scattered in the margins of his almanacs each year, such as the most famous of all: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Franklin would have been amused by how faithfully these were praised by subsequent advocates of self-improvement, and he would likely have been even more amused by the humorists who later poked fun at them. In a sketch with the ironic title "The Late Benjamin Franklin," Mark Twain gibed...
...helps those who help themselves, sent off to perform a spectacular tin-cup routine. It was all the more spectacular in that Franklin had grave doubts about the proposition. He was firmly of the opinion that America should not flounce about "suitoring for alliances." As it turned out, the maxim-defying years he spent begging in France saw the greatest political feat of his life and one of the greatest political triumphs of American history, yielding the only alliance America forged for 170 years. And Franklin held on to his post as American representative for eight years, despite regular attempts...