{"id":39592,"date":"2017-07-31T05:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T09:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39592"},"modified":"2017-07-31T22:31:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T02:31:33","slug":"if-youre-wondering-where-anthony-scaramucci-learned-to-talk-and-behave-ask-him-how-many-times-hes-seen-glengarry-glen-ross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/07\/31\/if-youre-wondering-where-anthony-scaramucci-learned-to-talk-and-behave-ask-him-how-many-times-hes-seen-glengarry-glen-ross\/","title":{"rendered":"“If you\u2019re wondering where Anthony Scaramucci learned to talk and behave […] ask him how many times he\u2019s seen Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>“"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Scaramucci is doing his very best impression of “Blake”, says Kevin Williamson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em> is the Macbeth<\/em> of real estate, full of great, blistering lines and soliloquies so liberally peppered with profanity that the original cast had nicknamed the show \u201cDeath of a F***ing Salesman.\u201d But a few of those attending the New York revival left disappointed. For a certain type of young man, the star of Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em> is a character called Blake, played in the film by Alec Baldwin. We know that his name is \u201cBlake\u201d only from the credits; asked his name by one of the other salesmen, he answers: \u201cWhat\u2019s my name? F*** you. That\u2019s my name.\u201d In the film, Blake sets things in motion by delivering a motivational speech and announcing a sales competition: \u201cFirst prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize? A set of steak knives. Third prize is, you\u2019re fired. Get the picture?\u201d He berates the salesmen in terms both financial \u2014 \u201cMy watch cost more than your car!\u201d \u2014 and sexual. Their problem, in Blake\u2019s telling, isn\u2019t that they\u2019ve had a run of bad luck or bad sales leads \u2014 or that the real estate they\u2019re trying to sell is crap \u2014 it is that they aren\u2019t real men.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

These guys don\u2019t want to see Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>. What they want is to be Blake<\/em>. They want to swagger, to curse, to insult, and to exercise power over men, exercising power over men being the classical means to the end of exercising power over women, which is of course what this, and nine-tenths of everything else in human affairs, is about. Blake is a specimen of that famous creature, the \u201calpha male,\u201d and establishing and advertising one\u2019s alpha creds is an obsession for some sexually unhappy contemporary men. There is a whole weird little ecosystem of websites (some of them very amusing) and pickup-artist manuals offering men tips on how to be more alpha, more dominant, more commanding, a literature that performs roughly the same function in the lives of these men that Cosmopolitan<\/em> sex tips play in the lives of insecure women. Of course this advice ends up producing cartoonish, ridiculous behavior. If you\u2019re wondering where Anthony Scaramucci learned to talk and behave like such a Scaramuccia<\/em><\/a>, ask him how many times he\u2019s seen Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s notable about the advice offered to young men aspiring to be \u201calpha males\u201d is that it is consistent with the classic salesmanship advice offered by the real-world versions of Blake in a hundred thousand business-inspiration books (Og Mandino\u2019s The Greatest Salesman in the World<\/em> is the classic of the genre) and self-help tomes, summarized in an old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan: \u201cFake it \u2019til you make it.\u201d For the pick-up artists, the idea is that simply acting in social situations as though one were confident, successful, and naturally masterful is a pretty good substitute for being those things. Never mind the advice of Cicero (esse quam videri<\/em>, be rather than seem) or Rush<\/a> \u2014 just go around acting like Blake and people will treat you like Blake. <\/p>\n

If that sounds preposterous, remind yourself who the president of the United States of America is. <\/p>\n

Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans \u2014 and America \u2014 went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/strong>: I guess he came in third<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Scaramucci is doing his very best impression of “Blake”, says Kevin Williamson: Glengarry Glen Ross is the Macbeth of real estate, full of great, blistering lines and soliloquies so liberally peppered with profanity that the original cast had nicknamed the show \u201cDeath of a F***ing Salesman.\u201d But a few of those attending the New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[1037,122],"class_list":["post-39592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-donaldtrump","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aiA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39614,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39592\/revisions\/39614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}