Word: ploy
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...work on the Hiss case, a group of young California Republicans urged him to run for the Senate in 1950. Campaigning vigorously against the Democrats' Actress-Politician Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon toured the state in a station wagon, while Mrs. Douglas used a helicopter. Nixon developed a memorable ploy against her, obviously a major addition to Lifemanship.* He audibly and publicly worried about her health and, as a friend describes it, "He'd get a real sad look on his face whenever he bumped into her and say, 'It's awfully hard on a woman, this...
Manhattan Adman Shepherd Mead is a 38-year-old vice president of Benton & Bowles, and a devoted follower of Britain's Stephen Potter, founder and master of Gamesmanship (how to win at games "without actually cheating") and Lifemanship. Mead's ploy is successmanship. In his new book, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Simon & Schuster; $2.50), he sets down a valuable list of plonks and gambits for the aspiring junior executive ("any male in an office who sits down...
...ploy usually works since audiences enjoy melodrama. Change the century's villain from a landlord to the communists, the hero from a farm boy to the F.B.I., the issue from this month's rent to atom bomb secrets, and a skillful director can guide unknown actors toward familiar outcomes to the satisfaction of everyone involved. Jerry Hooper is one skillful director...
...pure animal cunning, there is nothing that beats the "infra-supra ploy." You know that something is true, and you know the professor knows it is true, but you'll be hanged if you know why. So you launch into a scholarly essay on the subject. The first time you reach the point in question, you state the correct conclusion and in parenthesis say "infra" i.e. this will be proved later. Next comes eight or nine pages of malarkey--ponderous, confusing, perhaps even relevant in spots. Then you reach the conclusion, in which you restate the known "correct position...
...flavor which separates this book from other Bemelmans, however, is derived from the title ploy, identified as "The Delicate Art of Self-Aggrandizement"--previously discussed by the English wit, Stephen Potter, as "Lifesmanship...