Word: snake-oil
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...children of 1968 borrowed buzzwords from the East: ; karma, Rama, Krishna, om and the sound of one hand clapping. Other equally euphonic names would waken the third eye: marijuana and lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. "The deep psychedelic experience is a death-rebirth flip," said Timothy Leary, the great snake-oil salesman of LSD. "There is no death . . . There is just off-on, in-out, start-stop, light-dark, flash- delay." Jailed in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on a marijuana charge, Leary escaped with the help of the Weathermen. The radical political group praised Leary, saying "LSD and grass will...
MORE than 1600 people crowded into the Zion Baptist Church a Sunday or two ago to hear a politician and smell the same snake-oil their great-grandfathers did back when politics was a circus--not a situation comedy...
...Speaker a year ago, he has unwisely poured out his contempt for Ronald Reagan in dozens of not-so-private gatherings around town. Wright has called the President a "liar" and worse. White House aides, no strangers to bile, whispered again last week, "Jim Wright is a mean-spirited snake-oil salesman, and nobody wants to deal with him." On the Nicaraguan flap, Wright and Secretary of State George Shultz grandly staged their own truce negotiations, but that hardly dispels what one Congressman calls a "reservoir of bitterness" against the Speaker. Some of that is normal in the election season...
With his bushy eyebrows, courtly manners and singsong Texas drawl, Jim Wright comes across as a curious mix: part kindly uncle, part snake-oil salesman. It was the second ingredient that gave some Democrats pause about the new House Speaker's delivering the party's response to Ronald Reagan's State of the Union address. But Wright was eager for his moment in the limelight, and the result was a pleasant surprise for most of his colleagues. In many ways, the speech by the 17-term House veteran proved more effective than the slickly produced Democratic responses of past years...
M.I.T. Economist Martin Weitzman may at first appear to be his profession's version of a snake-oil salesman. In his new book The Share Economy (Harvard; $15), Weitzman claims to have found a cure-all that will end both unemployment and inflation. The trick, he says, is for U.S. industry to abandon the practice of paying fixed wages and adopt a scheme that would compensate workers in relation to their employers' revenues or profits...